Elon Musk blames Twitter cost cuts on “$3 billion negative cash flow”

Musk says he'll resign once he finds someone "foolish enough to take the job."

See full article...

 

[The Aloof Alot]

Attorney: "Could you please describe to the court what happened on the night in question, in your own words?"
Mush: "I walked forward with a knife in my hand and the other guy failed to get out of the way."

Twitter version:

Attorney: "Could you please describe to the court the sequence of events that lead to the blue bird's premature demise, in your own words?"
Musk: "As I saw Twitter-chan in action, I wondered what made her tick. So I strapped her to an operation table, cut off her legs, removed her intestine system, sliced out her heart, and rummaged around in her brain, and suddenly she decided to stop breathing, that dumb chicken. I don't understand why that would happen, it was just a case of vivisection. People are supposed to survive that, it's in the word, "vivi", that means "alive". I'm sure she just did that to spite me, because she couldn't accept that my vast brain is superior to all of humanity. Also, why are you questioning me, you inferior jackass? Do you know who I am?"

 

[_GntlStone_]

All true, but in this case he was a passenger who didn't like all the rules, threw the pilots out of a generally stable plane (after giving them all the parachutes), then stepped into the cockpit and announced he was going to figure out how to fly, also he was going to make this jet a spaceship, and probably redesign the wings to make it more efficient while in flight.

Full Self Diving

 

[Bilateralrope]

Twitter version:

Attorney: "Could you please describe to the court the sequence of events that lead to the blue bird's premature demise, in your own words?"
Musk: "As I saw Twitter-chan in action, I wondered what made her tick. So I strapped her to an operation table, cut off her legs, removed her intestine system, sliced out her heart, and rummaged around in her brain, and suddenly she decided to stop breathing, that dumb chicken. I don't understand why that would happen, it was just a case of vivisection. People are supposed to survive that, it's in the word, "vivi", that means "alive". I'm sure she just did that to spite me, because she couldn't accept that my vast brain is superior to all of humanity. Also, why are you questioning me, you inferior jackass? Do you know who I am?"

That sounds more like the Neuralink version.

 

[Fancy Internet Person]

Thinking about how important Twitter is to businesses and governments for messaging -- Given how important verification is in allowing for that to happen, and given that Elon is trying to bandaid over a billion-dollar shortfall with blue mark bucks, I wonder why Twitter hasn't implemented a tiered verification system. You'd have to work out the exact definitions, but something like:

Individual account - $4.20 / yr
Small celebrity / influencer - < 1000 followers -- $20 / yr
Business - $100 / year
Business Plan Plus With Real Customer Support (Contains Natural and Artificial Humans)- $500/qtr
Nonprofit / Education / Emergency- subsidized
Government - $1,000 /yr for package of 20 account

Most people don't want to have to pay to engage with Twitter, but for a lot of people with money it is a great free megaphone. Squeezing those people seems like an obvious first step.

Lol, no.

If Twitter has to.charge the people who make the content that as attracts users who view ads, then it's toast.

If Twitter can't figure out their business plan without government subsidies, then it isn't going to be available or reliable enough to be of any use in an emergency.

That's a great reason to plan for contingencies. Like setting up Mastodon accounts and telling everyone about them.... but you can't do that now on Twitter. Musk has made Twitter less useful.

 

[Kirsu]

A potted plant would have done a better job at being Twitter's CEO than Elon. In fact, I nominate a potted plant as the new CEO. Any potted plant would do.

I nominate that head of lettuce with googly eyes.

 

[tenocticatl]

I don't know how much people at Twitter were earning, but I fail to see how firing 3000 people would save you 3 billion dollars.

 

[graylshaped]

Replacing a techbro with a techbud.

Will you be my techboo?

 

[graylshaped]

I don't know how much people at Twitter were earning, but I fail to see how firing 3000 people would save you 3 billion dollars.

Even if you round up, and assume they were all being paid $150K, and assign benefits. I don't see it getting to one billion. Maybe if you shed offices, and sell the buildings far beyond market rates, you might get to $1.5B.

Musk seeks to be the best gaslighter ever. Pity he is still chasing Covfece's rump on that one.

 

[Flerbizky]

I've not heard of this one. What was that?

I'm probably tree'd - But Mush twatted he was holding their first born who died of SIDS when he passed which was publicly debunked by the mother. https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/

 

[StrahdIvarius]

Now the question is: Will this "fool" be an actual fool, or someone competent who wants to and is able to turn Twitter around?

If he's looking for an actual fool, he should just keep the position, he's got that on lock.

If the new head of Twitter starts by suspending EM's account, we will know he is not a fool...

 

[jeremyp66]

I don't know how much people at Twitter were earning, but I fail to see how firing 3000 people would save you 3 billion dollars.

It's just one of many things you need to do. Firing 3k people might get you a billion in savings but you also need to cut down on infrastructure costs which is why Musk is doing his best to drive users away from the platform. Once they're down to the point of needing a couple of Amazon EC2 instances, they're gold.

I'm sure there must be a flaw in that plan somewhere, but I can't think what it is.

 

[PurpleChair]

You'd have to be a lot more foolish to want to buy Twitter than to want to head it, so...clone yourself?

Twitter is very interesting as a product. On the one hand, it's almost like a utility: e.g. it's super easy to report an issue with an elevator at a train station to our national rail company. On the other hand, it's this ultra-direct social network with hardly any filters at all.

Why has Twitter never tried to make products for companies who want great communications infrastructure, e.g. company pages on twitter, twitter-made corporate twitter communication toolsets, adding direct voice calling for companies? Or maybe they did but I missed that.

Why did Microsoft never buy Twitter, to integrate it with LinkedIn? I get that the flamewar side of Twitter might go against what LinkedIn stands for, but honesty, LinkedIn content quality is quickly going towards Facebook anyway. I'm only on there because it's how I find new jobs, which is exactly the hook that Microsoft should be using.

 

[geni]

All true, but in this case he was a passenger who didn't like all the rules, threw the pilots out of a generally stable plane (after giving them all the parachutes), then stepped into the cockpit and announced he was going to figure out how to fly, also he was going to make this jet a spaceship, and probably redesign the wings to make it more efficient while in flight.

He didn't just decide to redesign the wings, he took the old ones off before he'd even started designing the new ones! He'll still be doodling his wing design sketches (CyberWings™) in crayon when the Twitter plane hits the ground, if it doesn't break up in-flight first.

He is trying his best to overtake SFB for the prestigious 'just stop talking' award for self-destructive.

 

[Maxipad]

In short - Twitter while underperforming for a while was doing ok. With Musk acquisition it got weighted down by 20% extra costs and more debt.

In panic from the ill-conceived acquisition Musk first tried to get out of the deal by smearing the company he was acquiring to turn around and then, once he failed that, full of hubris and arrogance he tried to act as deus ex machina and in a state of confusion managed to make a mess that further drove away advertisers.

He lost billions of existing revenues while trying to create tens of millions of dollars in new subscription revenues … what a master stroke

I think you're being too nice to him...

 

[Maxipad]

Oh, man, that must have burned his ass, having professionals laugh at his total stupidity like that. Bet that hasn't happened for a long, long time to little Elon.

Well, nobody who works for him will do it because it's a good way to get fired on the spot.

That's the bubble he lives in, hence his confusion when booed by Chapelle's crowd and Musk's subsequent claim that "it was only 10% boos".

The "man's" ego is very fragile.

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

Gwynne Shotwell runs the show at SpaceX and is a competent manager. It's become obvious that Musk is just the hype man. He's the Flavor Flav of SpaceX.

Rocket equation, addendum 1:
SpaceX - Shotwell reigning in Musk = Pythom

 

[Maxipad]

…. Ok. I get what yir kinda implying here but Musk isn’t troubled psychologically or “on the spectrum’ .. he isn’t cognitively divergent or a unstable genius with a unique mind .. he isn’t anywhere near that interesting
he’s a spoiled ‘special child’ of a very very wealthy and privileged family.


first to clear the air to only person to claim Elon was autistic or has Asperger's is Elon because he thought it would make people like him on SNL - and he almost immediately withdrew from the comment in his next speaking engagement

(.. and another thing We are all ‘on the spectrum’. That what a spectrum is, a range over which some measurable property can vary.. so even if you have few or even no symptoms your on the spectrum , if the measurable property is zero, its still on the spectrum just at the extreme end. )

all this crap about Elon being some one of a kind genius child is just the frustrations of his mother sublimated into aggressive affection .. and marketing

Elon claims he's autistic to cover for the fact he lies so much (amongst other things). This causes him to look away from other people while he lies to them. He lies so much that it seems almost constant.

Check out videos of him talking (lying) about his academic credentials (which are mostly completely fraudulent). He looks away when he is lying to the interviewer. There are other videos of him doing the same thing w/regards to other topics.

It's tough being a fraud.

 

[Captain Trips]

A potted plant would have done a better job at being Twitter's CEO than Elon. In fact, I nominate a potted plant as the new CEO. Any potted plant would do.

I nominate Clippy. "I see you are trying to find racist and inflammatory content - let me help you find it!"

 

[John Dallman]

As most will agree that Twitter runs a socially beneficial service . . .

Err, no. It has run a service with potential for both good and evil, like many powerful tools. But it was always dangerous, because it was very suitable for over-confident narcissists to influence huge numbers of people. That happened with Trump, and while the USA survived him, it took a lot of damage in the process.

In the largest view, Musk's destruction of Twitter will actually make the world a (slightly) safer place, until something rises to take its place. It's bad for all the people who did good things with it, but they were always vulnerable to a malignant takeover of the company.

Things could be worse: think about what an efficient takeover could have done. Betraying dissidents to repressive governments, blackmailing people whose e-mail addresses and locations it knew . . . the possibilities for surveillance-for-pay in countries that don't protect the rights of their citizens are endless.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

It's just one of many things you need to do. Firing 3k people might get you a billion in savings but you also need to cut down on infrastructure costs which is why Musk is doing his best to drive users away from the platform. Once they're down to the point of needing a couple of Amazon EC2 instances, they're gold.

I'm sure there must be a flaw in that plan somewhere, but I can't think what it is.

I strongly suspect a lot of the 'savings' come in the form of 'Let's just not pay our vendors. We can save a lot of money that way. Hell, not paying the rent alone means saving ourselves a lot of negative cashflow'.

Musk has shown himself the very definition of a "Very Stable Genius". For the contemporary accepted definition of that term, that is...

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

I nominate Clippy. "I see you are trying to find racist and inflammatory content - let me help you find it!"
View attachment 49219

It may be a sign of the time that at this point not even the got dam MS paperclip looks like a worse option for a boss than Musk.
I don't like how deep this rabbit hole just went.

 

[Bilateralrope]

I strongly suspect a lot of the 'savings' come in the form of 'Let's just not pay our vendors. We can save a lot of money that way. Hell, not paying the rent alone means saving ourselves a lot of negative cashflow'.

Musk has shown himself the very definition of a "Very Stable Genius". For the contemporary accepted definition of that term, that is...

It's all about the short term gains.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

You'd have to be a lot more foolish to want to buy Twitter than to want to head it, so...clone yourself?

Twitter is very interesting as a product. On the one hand, it's almost like a utility: e.g. it's super easy to report an issue with an elevator at a train station to our national rail company. On the other hand, it's this ultra-direct social network with hardly any filters at all.

Why has Twitter never tried to make products for companies who want great communications infrastructure, e.g. company pages on twitter, twitter-made corporate twitter communication toolsets, adding direct voice calling for companies? Or maybe they did but I missed that.

Why did Microsoft never buy Twitter, to integrate it with LinkedIn? I get that the flamewar side of Twitter might go against what LinkedIn stands for, but honesty, LinkedIn content quality is quickly going towards Facebook anyway. I'm only on there because it's how I find new jobs, which is exactly the hook that Microsoft should be using.

Twitter never entered the corporate market because, well, there's a lot of shit which goes into corporate which simply isn't shit Twitter does or did well. Security and communication restriction along with verbose transmission. If what you've already got is MS Teams with the ability to send files, show your screen, video conference with hundreds of participants, etc, Twitter is a very niche application generally not called for.

No, twitter is exactly in the market it's designed for. 280 characters is long enough for a talking point tossed onto large masses of people, nowhere near where what you'd need for a presentation.

Briefly put, Twitter can be summarized as being a bullhorn. It does the job when what you want is to be shouty but it isn't what you need when what you want to bring is verbose and contextual communication.

 

[nimelennar]

I nominate that head of lettuce with googly eyes.

And the bright side is, by the time Twitter goes under, it should still be fresh enough to eat.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

It's all about the short term gains.

About that...what gains would those be?

Because I've been racking my brain over any conceivable scenario where Musk comes out ahead of the disaster curve and no conceivable angle paints a convincing image of gains of any kind in any kind of timespan exceeding that of Musk having himself a Major Kong Moment.

 

[U-99]

“We have an emergency fire drill on our hands. ... This company is like you’re in a plane that is headed towards the ground and high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work,” he said. “That’s the reason for my actions that may seem sometimes spurious.”

Putting aside the fact that your debt financing is gasoline on the purported fiscal fire, then why did you buy Twitter?

 

[Bilateralrope]

About that...what gains would those be?

Because I've been racking my brain over any conceivable scenario where Musk comes out ahead of the disaster curve and no conceivable angle paints a convincing image of gains of any kind in any kind of timespan exceeding that of Musk having himself a Major Kong Moment.

Keep the share price up for just long enough to sell them. After that, what happens doesn't matter.

Musk tried to sell some of his Twitter shares:
https://www.semafor.com/article/12/16/2022/elon-musks-team-is-seeking-new-investors-for-twitter
Sure, there are problems with that plan. But I'm not sure that Musk sees them.

 

[numerobis]

In short - Twitter while underperforming for a while was doing ok. With Musk acquisition it got weighted down by 20% extra costs and more debt.

In panic from the ill-conceived acquisition Musk first tried to get out of the deal by smearing the company he was acquiring to turn around and then, once he failed that, full of hubris and arrogance he tried to act as deus ex machina and in a state of confusion managed to make a mess that further drove away advertisers.

He lost billions of existing revenues while trying to create tens of millions of dollars in new subscription revenues … what a master stroke

Your timeline is a bit off. Advertisers started holding back immediately when Musk signed to buy the place. Had the deal fallen apart for whatever reason, probably they’d come back but Twitter would still be in a rough way.

 

[marsilies]

Your timeline is a bit off. Advertisers started holding back immediately when Musk signed to buy the place. Had the deal fallen apart for whatever reason, probably they’d come back but Twitter would still be in a rough way.

The bottom line is if Musk hadn't ever moved to buy Twitter, it would be doing fine, and maybe even would've posted a profit this year.

As soon as Musk stepped in it, it started negatively affecting Twitter, with the bulk of that occurring after the acquisition was finalized, most notably Musk saddling the company with an extra $13 billion in debt.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

Keep the share price up for just long enough to sell them. After that, what happens doesn't matter.

Musk tried to sell some of his Twitter shares:
https://www.semafor.com/article/12/16/2022/elon-musks-team-is-seeking-new-investors-for-twitter
Sure, there are problems with that plan. But I'm not sure that Musk sees them.

If his business plan is "Buy high, sell low" then that's a "problem" the same way a bucket-and-ladder clown act is a "fire department in need of minor tweaking".

I'll freely confess I'm not a businessman, let alone that dedicated a capitalist - but if a centre-left european like me can see the massive issues likely to result from the trainwreck he initiated on day one of taking over then surely someone used to actually juggle significant amounts of money and investments has to be aware?

 

[Turbofrog]

There is not. Similar to Bezos and Amazon.

Really? Because I feel like Bezos could disappear from the face of the earth entirely and Amazon as a business wouldn't change in the slightest. Amazon is roughly 10x bigger than Tesla (in concrete metrics like revenue, profit, built infrastructure, and employee count), and has both far greater market dominance and sheer corporate inertia.

In fact, when you wrote that, did you even realize that Bezos is no longer the CEO of Amazon? He literally stepped down more than a year ago and...absolutely nothing changed.

 

[zogus]

Really? Because I feel like Bezos could disappear from the face of the earth entirely and Amazon as a business wouldn't change in the slightest. Amazon is roughly 10x bigger than Tesla (in concrete metrics like revenue, profit, built infrastructure, and employee count), and has both far greater market dominance and sheer corporate inertia.

In fact, when you wrote that, did you even realize that Bezos is no longer the CEO of Amazon? He literally stepped down more than a year ago and...absolutely nothing changed.

Amazon seems to have done more than any other big tech entity to make the largest e-commerce operation in the world runnable by a bunch of ordinary middle managers, not dependent on a crack team of hardcore engineers. I understand Bezos prides himself on building up that culture, and I do have to say that is an impressive feat, even if I am ambivalent about the effect of Amazon upon the rest of society.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

If his business plan is "Buy high, sell low" then that's a "problem" the same way a bucket-and-ladder clown act is a "fire department in need of minor tweaking".

It's not that bad, don't worry. It's buy high, sell high after you've already chewed through the wiring, made a shit-nest in the attic, pissed down the drywall enough to grow mold, and broken every pipe beneath the foundations. Because he wanted to sell those shares for the exact same price that he paid.

Either his current characterizations of Twitter and its financial situation are totally false, or he was incredibly foolish to buy the company - there is no third option.

Uh, clearly the third and correct option is "both." He's been lying about Twitter's business fundamentals since day 1 of the deal, AND he was an idiot to buy it even if we took his "bots!" claim at face value. He was roundly mocked for it at the time back in April.

A potted plant would have done a better job at being Twitter's CEO than Elon. In fact, I nominate a potted plant as the new CEO. Any potted plant would do.

I know just the plant for the job! Lots of previous experience!

 

[Jon Smythe]

So basically, Musk is the reason why Twitter is losing money. How stupid do you have to be to spend $44 BILLION on something that's bleeding cash, and in the purchase, make it bleed more? If not for the interest on his loan, and the loss of advertising money he's chased away, and the users he's chased away...

Because "Freedumb of Speech!" and "Owning the Libs!"

Just look at all the things The Twitter Files are exposing on the lefties and their evil machinations!

/s (just in case it isn't clear to some readers)

 

[Onomatopeon]

"There wouldn't have been a wreck if someone hadn't put this WALL here!"

 

[Disordered]

It’s sobering to know that people will literally die because Musk froze some peaches.

Yes.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/anti-lgbtq-hate-thrives-online-133713897.html
https://news.yahoo.com/lgbtq-americans-9-times-more-195927462.html
With Roe disabled, the fascists "caught the car". Now they are turning to LGBTQ hate, to keep their useful idiots riled.

To do that, Twitter is a better venue than Parler or Gab.

So, I think Twitter will limp on. The various fascist, treasonous, bad actors involved will achieve that. Because the rot is very deep. Funny how Snowden is a criminal, but 30% of Americans are Trump voters, and he'll never be accountable.

 

[CraigJ ✅]

In short - Twitter while underperforming for a while was doing ok. With Musk acquisition it got weighted down by 20% extra costs and more debt.

In panic from the ill-conceived acquisition Musk first tried to get out of the deal by smearing the company he was acquiring to turn around and then, once he failed that, full of hubris and arrogance he tried to act as deus ex machina and in a state of confusion managed to make a mess that further drove away advertisers.

He lost billions of existing revenues while trying to create tens of millions of dollars in new subscription revenues … what a master stroke

It fine! He's just buying eyeballs and he'll make it up on volume!

 

[jbode]

Either his current characterizations of Twitter and its financial situation are totally false, or he was incredibly foolish to buy the company - there is no third option.

He talks about the situation like he was stuck with Twitter despite his best efforts, and is now making the best of what anyone would recognize as a terrible situation. One would almost forget that he made an aggressive leveraged buyout of the company this very year.

The rank stupidity of this situation defies belief.

That'd be an inclusive-or.

 

[nimelennar]

Putting aside the fact that your debt financing is gasoline on the purported fiscal fire, then why did you buy Twitter?

Charitably, because he didn't perform due diligence before buying, and waived it in the merger contract. So he didn't have an accurate impression of its fiscal situation.

As for why he waived due diligence, that's because he is: