Even that seems wildly overvalued. https://t.co/FRZq58R4tT
— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) October 30, 2023
I assume this is happening now because the IRS, or the banks which are his creditors — or both — are pressing Musk a littler harder than he can handle? Per the NYTimes:
X, the company formerly known as Twitter, handed out stock grants to employees on Monday that showed it was worth about $19 billion, down about 55 percent from the $44 billion that Elon Musk paid to buy the firm a year ago, according to internal documents seen by The New York Times.
Mr. Musk paid $54.20 a share to buy Twitter just over a year ago. The tech billionaire has since said he overpaid for the social network. In March, he wrote in an email to workers that he believed the company was worth $20 billion, calling it “an inverse start-up.”
In the paperwork for the new stock grants, X said the equity would be offered at $45 a share in the form of restricted stock units, which employees can earn over time. Employees will still be paid in cash in the amount of $54.20 for any outstanding shares that were granted to them under previous management, the company said.
It’s unclear why the share price has not dropped by the same percentage as the company’s valuation, though X could have altered the amount of shares outstanding. Fortune earlier reported on the valuation…
I cannot imagine Elon knows anything about dating, and he spent $44B on this site so I don't think he should be holding anyone's money either. https://t.co/FQdlh1ROA9
— Linette Lopez (@lopezlinette) October 30, 2023
… A company-wide meeting on Thursday, the year anniversary of when Musk took over Twitter, hosted by Musk and his CEO of a few months Linda Yaccarino, was mostly an ad nauseam going over the various product changes to the platform, according to two people present for the video call. These individuals requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press. Their identities are known to Insider. Both described the call overall as “scripted,” but it wasn’t without off-kilter comments.
During the call, Musk attempted to take a tone of excitement for what X will look like over the next year, the people present said. X will in 2024 be a “fully fledged” dating site, he insisted, as well as a digital bank. These details have not been previously reported, although other elements of the call were reported by The Verge as was the email that went out to staff right before the call by Fortune.
Musk did not get into details of how exactly X would become a dating app, if there was any user demand for such features, or what further product changes would be made to turn it into one, one of the people present said. However, the idea is in line with Musk’s push for features that require payment, as most dating apps today are some form of subscription service…
Getting more users to give X payment and banking information ties in with Musk’s long-held desire for X to offer full payment and banking services to users, part of his ambitions to create an “everything app” like WeChat, one of the people present said. “He wants people to pay for everything,” the person noted. Musk said during the meeting he expects X to be capable of functioning as a bank by next year, the person added, whether or not users want it to be.
“It doesn’t seem to be what users really want,” the person said…
Ed Zitron, at his (unpaywalled) Substack, on the plate-spinning “Junk Bond Trader”:
Elon Musk is not an inventor, a creator or an innovator. He is not a thoughtful leader or steward of companies, nor is he worthy of any title that suggests he has been the active force behind any major accomplishment by any company…
No, Elon Musk is far more of a modern-day hustler, a nihilistic master of the art of financial plate-spinning and theoretical value. He is, in many ways, quite innovative, but only in the sense that he has repeatedly found ways to swindle the media and the financial markets without ever having to make or do anything. His joyless, banal and destructive path to becoming the world’s richest man is fueled entirely through exploiting the weaknesses of society. To quote Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker, Musk has a “Ph.D in man’s ignorance,” and can cleanly see where rules can be bent or broken entirely without creating any real existential threat…
Musk realized early on that by crafting a certain persona — the modern day trailblazing innovator with his hands in the future — he could take advantage of the emotional (and at times deeply illogical) nature of the markets, manipulating large cadres of investors into believing that he was a kingmaker.
And nowhere have the markets been more thoroughly hoodwinked than by Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, where he successfully conned banks like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays into giving him $13 toward the $44 billion purchase of a massively-overvalued public company. A year into the acquisition, Twitter is worth a tenth of its purchase price, its value destroyed by the very kingmaker the banks had hoped would turn their investment into easily-floggable debt rather than what may go down as the worst acquisition in tech history…
Musk took advantage of the greed and arrogance of financiers that have crafted a market that responds to signals and vibes over good company financials. A company can firmly sit in the red for years without fear that their stock will drop as long as they can show revenue growth, and a stock like Tesla’s — one decoupled from rationale or fundamentals — can soar based entirely on the bloviating of a 53-year-old man-child. Musk’s facade had been carried by the fact he had, for the most part, made good investments and then left the companies in question to actually build the things, operating as an awkward carnival barker, calling questions he didn’t like “boneheaded” and “uncool.”
The problem was that Twitter, for the most part, is totally unlike any other company that Musk has owned or had a hand in creating…
… Musk cannot encourage “more” of Twitter, because Twitter is already so vast, and monetizing an experience that is already free hasn’t been particularly successful. Twitter Blue has just over a million subscribers, and they’re “superspreaders” of disinformation, weakening the core “tweets” product that actually makes Twitter money.
One might argue that Elon’s sell-the-sizzle playbook is antithetical to Twitter as a company. Twitter had, until 2022, become notable less as a company and more as an institution — a place where news was broken, arguments were had, and discourse brewed. By making Twitter more conspicuous, Musk has somehow increased scrutiny while reducing traffic, because much of the press around Twitter is telling you that the core product is worse, and its creators (and leadership team) are part of the problem. While Musk can temporarily distract from build problems with the cybertruck by driving one to an F1 race, his near-autonomous ability to drive press to his products is a never-ending advertisement for why Twitter sucks and you shouldn’t visit it.
It’s hard to guess where things go next. Musk could offer to buy the debt at dirt-cheap prices, but the banks will likely refuse, demanding instead that he continues to make his $1 billion interest payments. Twitter itself could file for bankruptcy, as the debt is held by the company itself, which would likely lead to a fire sale and the company’s acquisition by another big tech giant, assuming that at that point there’s much left of a platform crumbling on a daily basis…
He turned a wildly imperfect, barely profitable but incredibly influential global town square teeming with up-to-the-moment info and organic conversations and turned it into a failing pay-to-hate vanity messageboard
— John DeVore (@JohnDeVore) October 30, 2023
TriassicSands
How long before Mush [sic] decides he should be president? Being born in South Africa shouldn’t be a problem in the future Confederate States of America.
patrick II
TwitterX is just getting progressively worse. I don’t post there but use it to read tweets (do they still call them that?) on politics, music, and comedy. I found it useful. I found the Liberal Redneck there. Anyhow, on my page today I had ads for how to kill with a knife, how to kill with your bare hands, multiple videos of black people fighting, Matt Gaetz (whom I do not follow) telling me that we are too poor to spend money on Ukraine, and Don Jr. who I’ve blocked three times, babbling incoherently about — something. The place has become a garbage can. So, I got on the list for Blue Sky. I hope the wait isn’t too long.
Lapassionara
This whole saga has a “don’t look at that man behind the curtain” feel to it.
bjacques
@TriassicSands: and now I’m thinking that apartheid South African mogul in Harry Turtledove’s The Guns Of The South put in way too much effort financing that time machine to run automatic weapons to the Confederacy to make sure they won the Civil War. Far cheaper, if slower, to turn the Union into the CSA.
Ruckus
I left twit the day he bought it. Haven’t looked back, haven’t actually missed it, life goes on.
I wonder how many others left? It seems like a lot. I’d bet that some will stay till the bitter end, but I saw no reason for me to do that.
SpaceUnit
Twitter has been a “dating site” since Musk acquired it. Only it’s mostly just been Elon giving himself handjobs.
John Revolta
Elmo knows all about dating!
Easy sleazy!
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
Someone put up an article with stats collected by outside agencies. Compared to one year ago:
4% drop in accounts
16% drop in traffic, steadily dropping
For comparison, the other big social apps reported 20% growth
60% drop in advertising revenues
Checkmark sales recover 2% of lost revenue.
I thought it would be faster, but the death spiral is happening. He’s been covering the debt payments personally.
eclare
@patrick II:
This is what I don’t get, I am on Twitter (I will never call it X), and I don’t get any of that. I follow around one dozen people/organizations, and all I get are their tweets.
MattF
Gotta say, combining banking and dating is a new one, with all sorts of possibilities. Plus right-wing hellsite. How could anyone not want that?
p.a.
Is the Wealth=Intelligence idea as prevalent outside the US? (Not including, of course, the wealthy saying it, which is probably universal).
I sure looks like its more prevalent here on the right (freedumb! invisible hand!) but then: Sam Bankman-Fried.
Tony Jay
@MattF:
A place you can meet up and share bank details over your shared love of neo-Nazi iconography. What’s not to love?
Tony Jay
I’d quite like to call it TwiX, but that’s an insult to an excellent chocolate bar.
patrick IItheree
@eclare:
I can’t tell you why.Maybe it was just a bad day, but it was an unpleasant experience. I have read others who complain about all the right wing trash they are getting, so it happens, I guess not to everyone though.
patrick IItheree
@eclare:
It’s not that bad every day, but it was yesterday.
eclare
@patrick IItheree:
I believe you, so many have complained about the racist garbage on Twitter. I limit what I see only to those I follow, as opposed to following an algorithm, and I will miss twitter when it ends. From what I have read none of the other services functions the same way.
JR
@eclare: My guess would be that lurkers get the degraded experience. I’m sure there’s some marketing thinking in action, push people to join, and then push them to subscribe.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Isn’t an “inverse start-up” a “shut-down”?
”I’m not running this company into the ground, I’m reverse growing it.”
NetheadJay
@Tony Jay: Ah, a fellow TwiX enjoyer!
Narya
It’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping…
Citizen Dave
I am on Twitter. There are two streams, the twitter-generated “For You”, and the “People you are Following”. I read mostly the latter, and the former sometimes to see what Elon is pushing. Have blocked many nutjobs. They pushed Vivek tweets incessantly. I’ll be out the moment any real information, esp. Financial/card, is required. Am there under a fake name
E.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I didn’t get that either. What does he think he meant by saying that?
Rusty
@John Revolta: 4. Knock her up!
5. Dump her and move on.
He has, what 10 kids, by any number of women? What a catch for any woman!
Geminid
Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenaur announced his retirement yesterday.His district strecthes from Portland eastwards, and is rated D+22 by Cook’s.
Rep. Blumenaur was elected to replace Ron Wyden in 1996. This could be an interesting Democratic primary.
LiminalOwl
@Rusty: He’s not knocking up the girlfriends; at least some of them were borne by surrogates. (Which seems like it could be a great metaphor, but I’m not yet awake enough to run with it.)
LiminalOwl
@patrick II: bsky-social-jrhs7-vmbqa
(I have more, if anybody else wants one.)
Geminid
@Geminid: In Virginia, two House Democrats are retiring. Rep. Jennifer Wexton announced she is leaving her 10th CD seat because of illness, and Abigail Spanberger has let Democrats know she will not run again in the 7th CD in order to run for Governor in 2025.
Spanberger will make a formal announcement after next week’s General Assembly elections. Should she win, Rep. Spanberger will be Virginia’s first woman Governor.
LiminalOwl
Via Xopher Halftongue (reposting Edith Laurie Charles, whom I don’t know), in response to the idea of TwiX as a dating site): OKKKCupid.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@p.a.: I think the idea that wealth = intelligence is there, but also inherited wealth like Musk’s (and Trump’s) can mask people’s incompetence. It buys them positions more powerful than someone of comparable ability would be able to earn. It protects them from the consequences of their own dumb decisions. So it’s hard to judge how intelligent they are sometimes.
Rileys Enabler
@patrick II: I have BlueSky codes, if you’d like one? Email me at salcamatgmaildotcom.
I’ve got 3, so if anyone else is interested just email.
Another Scott
The $19B number is fantasy, of course. Twitter’s market cap was around $26B in March 2023, before the noise of his offer to buy it. There’s no way that his destruction has only done $7B in damage.
But, the market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent, so this is not financial advice.
Cheers,
Scott.
CliosFanBoy
I am so stealing that!
Chris Johnson
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: That’s what I thought. A ‘shut down’.
Or maybe it’d be more accurate to turn to Goodfellas, and call it a ‘bust out’.
Chris Johnson
@Citizen Dave: yo, Twitter departer: bsky-social-p2irn-aszqs
Turns out jackals from balloon juice have been the most useful place I could use these codes, and when the person doesn’t grab it, the code seems to sit for a while, like there’s a better chance of a human using it than some bot or something.
Geminid
@Chris Johnson: It looks like Cheryl Rofer is doing most of her posting on Blue Sky now. She’s left a post on Twitter to direct people to the new place, otherwise hardly Tweets at all.
artem1s
P0rn. That’s the only way this app is ever going to make money again.
patrick II
@LiminalOwl:
It’s Tuesday morning, but if you come back and visit I would like a pass. Thank you. Watergirl has my email address.
scav
@artem1s: Airbnb of escorts?
Citizen Dave
@Chris Johnson: so thoughtful, thanks. I’ve tried it 3 times and bluesky says it is invalid. Am emailing the kind jackal above.
Subsole
@artem1s:
Oh God, it’s Nazi Grindr…
Chris Johnson
@Citizen Dave: Yeah, somebody else from here jumped on it and followed other folks from here. Working as intended, hope you find one from another poster :)
Citizen Dave
@Chris Johnson: thanks!
Jamey
The magical part of all this is that every one of the 1000s of media stories about Musk’s Folly starts with, “… X — the social network formerly called Twitter …”
I know Musk bought Twitter to destroy it, but it’s fun seeing bits of his ego gnawed out like Prometheus’s liver every time Twitter gets dead-named.
Ascap_scab
Before Eratic Elon bought Twitter, it was valued by Wall Street at $8 Billion. I saw it at between $1 and 2 Billion.
Now that Phony Stark has wrecked ‘X’, it might be worth $750 Million in the right hands. In truth, Whack-a-doodle Musk has chased off users who will never come back.
Congrats, Eloon, you own MySpace.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Most people work at something, not invest in something. OK, sure they are investing in a future when they work at something. But elon was born into money and has never really had to do more than sign a check, or at least say he will. How many here actually had to do actual physical work to have a roof and food? 70+ percent, I’d say, another 20% work at a desk job. The rest are like elon, they don’t actually have to do anything. They may get bored and be like elon and spend money to have others do something so they can put their names on that whatever. But actual physical/mental work that brings in a regular weekly/monthly paycheck, pays rent/buys a home, feeds humans that has to happen or they can’t eat? Yeah, they never have to do that, wake up tired and do the same thing they did yesterday and will do tomorrow – so they can have a 2 week vacation once a year….