Said Elon Musk to Twitter employees, quoted in "Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter/Mr. Musk ordered immediate layoffs, fired executives by email, laid down product deadlines and has transformed the company" (NYT).
The executives warned their new boss that his plan could violate employment laws and breach contracts with workers, leading to employee lawsuits.... But Mr. Musk’s team said he was used to going to court and paying penalties, and was not worried about the risks.... Two days later, Mr. Musk learned exactly how costly those potential fines and lawsuits could be....
The 51-year-old barreled in with ideas about how the social media service should operate, but with no comprehensive plan to execute them....
"The 51-year-old" is a funny example of the "second mention" issue, previously blogged here. You know, the effortful and unnecessary avoidance of repeating a person's name. It's a writing foible.
Here's another new NYT article on the same subject — for those who are wondering about my visualization of Musk as one of 2 crashing, burning Hindenburg's — "'Economic Picture Ahead Is Dire,' Elon Musk Tells Twitter Employees/In his first communications with Twitter’s staff, the company’s new owner painted a bleak picture as more executives resigned."
At the meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk warned employees that Twitter... was running a negative cash flow of several billion dollars....
Presumably, per year.
Mr. Musk added that he had recently sold Tesla stock to “save” Twitter. He has sold nearly $4 billion in Tesla shares recently, according to regulatory filings this week. Even so, Mr. Musk said Twitter remained over-staffed after mass layoffs of half of the company’s 7,500 employees last week....
Twitter was too heavily dependent on advertising and vulnerable to pullbacks in brand spending, he added, and will need to bolster the revenue it gets from subscriptions....
Mr. Musk also loaded the company with $13 billion in debt for the buyout, and it is now on the hook to pay $1 billion in interest payments annually. Mr. Musk has previously said the company is losing $4 million a day. Twitter, whose communication department has been laid off, did not respond to a request for comment....
Funny line.
Twitter earns about 90 percent of its revenue from advertisers, some of whom have shied away from the platform in recent days because of uncertainties over Mr. Musk’s commitment to removing toxic content from Twitter. He has responded by threatening a “thermonuclear name & shame” of advertisers who choose to halt their spending.
Ridiculous!
Mr. Musk has also raced to find new subscription revenue....
“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” he wrote.
You know, people who write on Twitter are contributing their work to the site and not getting paid. That's one reason I decided against putting in much effort over there. Why should I build up someone else's site? And now these writers are supposed to pay money for the privilege of building up someone else's site.
AND: Also at the NYT right now "Elon Musk Has No Idea What He’s Doing at Twitter" by Farhad Manjoo:
He’s not wrong that Twitter’s business is a mess. But he seems to only be making things worse. In seemingly every move he makes, Musk stumbles into long-known difficulties that Twitter and other social media companies had developed ways of managing — but that Musk, in his eagerness to do everything differently, unthinkingly abandoned....
Before Thursday’s chaos, Musk’s confusion seemed to have reached an absurdist peak on Wednesday morning, when Twitter began rolling out a new set of verification badges to large brands, media organizations and some high-profile individual Twitter users. Within hours, Musk announced that he’d killed the rollout. It was maybe the most ill-advised, short-lived major product launch since Amazon tried to make a phone.
The saga reveals the deep confusion bedeviling Musk’s entire approach to his new company. It shows the hollowness of his plan: Musk says he wants to make Twitter a trusted source of information and a haven from online toxicity, a place where “comedy is now legal” and “the bird is free” but also does not feel like a “free-for-all hellscape.”
This is a tall order, but it’s made taller by Musk’s apparent indecision and need to be loved....
Posts
45 comments:
Elon needs to quickly learn that in very short order, after a continuing deluge of demonizing attacks from the legacy media, the only supporters he might have thought he had on the right, whether he wanted them or not, will abandon him completely.
They will probably start blaming him for Facebook, google, youtube shenanigans as well.
That pattern has now been fully demonstrated and the left/wokies/dems have noticed.
Business is messy. Most businesses fail. Especially businesses that do not have the tacit endorsement of the US Government.
The Regime/Media are really going after Twitter and Trump right now.
This is only confusing if you don't understand what the background to this is.
“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” he wrote.You know, people who write on Twitter are contributing their work to the site and not getting paid. That's one reason I decided against putting in much effort over there. Why should I build up someone else's site? And now these writers are supposed to pay money for the privilege of building up someone else's site."
If something is free you have to ask yourself why.
Are you willing to ask why some things are free Ann?
Twitter played an evil role in sabotaging the 2020 election. That sabotage has us on the edge of global nuclear war.
If Twitter can’t be properly reformed, it needs to die.
That’s not a failure on Musk’s part. He’s trying to salvage the platform.
You know, people who write on Twitter are contributing their work to the site and not getting paid.
I'm sure this will be belaboring the point by the time this comment sees the light of day, but Twitter has provided these people a free platform and free amplification for a long time, and now is charging them a whopping $8 a month for those things. Yes, their content contributions may also increase the size of Twitter's viewer base, so the relationship can be mutually beneficial.
And I am not denigrating the effort it takes to produce enough engaging content to keep people coming back. I can't do it; periodically I've tried. But I don't think the "content providers" are doing as much heavy lifting without remuneration as they appear to believe. The ones who are making money on their content because they're so popular are being paid, just not by Twitter, and the ones who aren't are also not adding to Twitter's value to any significant degree.
Twitter was a dumpster fire. It was going to lay off at least 25% either way. I find it wholly unremarkable that NYT obeyed Biden's order to "go after Musk and Twitter" and is all-in on the media blitz. And no the zeppelin is a poor analogy for many reasons, the main one being it was headed for disaster and if it was going to change direction it needed new owners or a better plan to bring income above expenses. Now that Musk is piloting the ship it has a chance to not go down in flames. But if it does he will be responsible for failing to save it. None of these articles has told us how closely the current admin was in control of things even though we know they were.
Today's big new thing isn't likely to be tomorrow's.
And once you reach a certain age, you aren't likely to spot what tomorrow's big new thing will be.
Jobs and Apple did manage a glorious comeback, but I don't think Musk can do it.
I'm not in any way involved in internet services, thus these are my personal observations only.
Since the onset of publicly-accessible internet, one persistent problem it has confronted (with non-marketing websites) has been how to successfully monetize it. Everything has been tried, from paid subscriptions to those annoying ads that pop out at you from the screen margins or interrupt the visual flow of a story/article.
It appears that the paid subscription format only "works" [in general] when multiple contributors are sufficiently aggregated, and priced appropriately (what that optimum might be is still being discovered.) Individually-paid subscription rapidly becomes expensive when piled one on top of another if the viewer/reader desires to obtain diverse information.
The biggest problem with the "free" format, with revenue solely derived from ads, seems to be the overwhelming infiltration of junk/bot/spam, and how to account for that when pricing and placing advertising: when is it (price, placement and frequency) sufficient to generate net positive revenue, and when is it annoying enough to compel viewers to exit early?
If you believe that my perception is in error, I'm happy to be corrected!
When the administration has declared openly that they are 'going to be investigating Elon Musk' you can bet they've already given the go to their friends in the media to start the lashings.
Still waiting for the Sam Bankman-Fried lashings to begin. Oh wait. Is he still a media darling? These things can change quickly, depending on who you are pissing off.
Twitter was a mess. I don't think Elon should have bought it to begin with, but he did so because of their power to censor and he felt deeply that if he didn't step in to 'fix it', it would not get done. He's now getting attacked for having to clean up someone else's mess. If Twitter goes down, it's his loss. His and his investors. So why is everyone bemoaning the status of the overpaid censors who are being let go? They manipulated the 2020 election. They have been fucking around with other people's lives and opinions for years now. There are much worse things that could have, and probably should have happened to them other than telling them that maybe it's time they applied to Vox instead.
Lurker21: "Jobs and Apple did manage a glorious comeback, but I don't think Musk can do it."
Noted.
Twitter is the model of a financed corporation that is not viable when climate change is forced by single/central/monopolistic solutions driving progressive prices (i.e. trickle-down economics).
How come nobody cares about the 11K Facebook / Meta just laid off?
This is what tech companies (especially) do.
They reinvent themselves, sometimes weekly, to find the right product offering.
So you either get on board and work your ass off or you get out.
I've been there.
The company was never viable if Musk taking Twitter private results in such bad bottom lines.
The NYT wants to portray the house cleaning terribly, but wasn't that the whole point? These guys were all getting paid to do nothing save for the routine censorship job.
The blue checks are crying about $8/month, but I'm surprised with how many new blue checks I've seen in the past few days.
Musk isn't lying- Twitter was burning cash since it's beginning. Such a company can't go on forever without radical changes in cost/revenue structures. Musk could have bought the company at a much cheaper price if he had made the tender offer at least 30% lower- he wasn't going to have any competition in the bidding- Twitter was in that kind of bad shape.
Temujin: "When the administration has declared openly that they are 'going to be investigating Elon Musk' you can bet they've already given the go to their friends in the media to start the lashings."
Keep this in mind as well: the democraticals wouldn't dare do this if they encountered united resistance by the entire GOP. Unfortunately, in the same way McConnell/Ryan/GOPe worked with the democraticals to harass and attack the Tea Party movement and are doing the same now with not just Trump but the entire Super Duper Mega MAGA movement with the full support of the GOPe, when Biden and Garland's Crew of Corruptocrats goes after Elon Musk, it will again be with the full support and cooperation of the GOPe.
And the GOPe has just been handed the keys to full republican party control again which is apparently what many here at Althouse want desperately. You know, to "regain" respectability.
FYI: George W Bush throws in his 2 cents along with Frank Luntz in full support of the GOPe, so it looks like all the GOPe sellout heavies are feeling their oats again.
Finally they can get back to the business of hollowing out our nation. Which is cool, cuz Trump is icky.
Gusty Winds: "How come nobody cares about the 11K Facebook / Meta just laid off?"
They haven't been able to come up with a way to blame Trump yet. Give them another 48 hours.
Birches: "The company was never viable if Musk taking Twitter private results in such bad bottom lines."
In a relatively recent interview, Musk said one of the key lessons he learned the hard way was failure to take an entity private as soon as possible. He was discussing Tesla but made it clear it applies to everything he wants to own.
So, even if Twitter might have a better Balance Sheet or Cash Flow statement as a public entity, Musk would still take it private for the benefit of control and direction setting.
You know, people who write on Twitter are contributing their work to the site and not getting paid. That's one reason I decided against putting in much effort over there. Why should I build up someone else's site? And now these writers are supposed to pay money for the privilege of building up someone else's site.
Any time you pay for a service or buy something you are supporting that business. You are building them up. But in the case of Twitter, you would also be building up your own presence. (If that was something that was important to you). Twitter is a medium that seems to generate a lot of quotes. I don't have twitter but I seem to read a lot of tweets because someone is always quoting someone else's tweet. Twitter generates a lot of visibility. LinkedIn also charges a monthly fee for upsized features. People are building that site up too, but they seem to get value from that additional service.
So for $8 you get less ads and more clout, and many who use twitter are looking to get clout. Seems a fair deal to me.
FYI, this morning Scott Adams mentioned the possibility of Musk adding a payment system to Twitter.
Think Twitter + PayPal.
If anyone could do it, he'd be the guy.
That could generate huge $$...
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/09/elon-musk-details-his-vision-for-a-twitter-payments-system/
Petty gloating for people that could never be great.
I knew this transition wouldn't go well.
From the beginning I have been saying that Elon should hire an army of journalists, influencers and retired professors to help him figure out how to turn around a drowning company. Will he ever listen?
Elon Musk: You're right, I did lose a billion dollars last year. I expect to lose a billion dollars this year. I expect to lose a billion dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a billion dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years.
Basically Musk is showing that 1/2 of twitter's employees were completely useless. Which is actually typical for corporations.
Lots of Gell-Mann Amnesia today. The only thing NYTimes has right about Musk is that by mentioning him as much as possible; they'll get readers. At least with Musk, they'll get readers without older feminist whining about using attractive females to bolster readership.
I'm with Gusty Winds. Facebook/Meta are reporting massive layoffs (11,000 or so). And Twitter/Facebook combined don't look as bad as Amazon's $1 Trillion loss in market value in 15 month's time. FTX just announced bankruptcy with $9.4B in debt. Salesforce may cut 2,500 workers. The Gap is losing 500. Wayfair downsizing 870 employees. Peloton has already cut 4,600 this year. ReMax slimming its workforce by 17%. Ford cut 3,000 in August. Walmart has cut 1,700.
But hey, let's not notice the entire economy is shedding jobs, because Republicans didn't get a red wave on Tuesday, and it is even more obvious who owns this failed economy... Musk, it's Musk!
BTW, have to go to Yahoo Singapore to find real news. Probably because they are even more cruelly neutral about who runs the US.
And it is fine if you want to focus on Twitter's cashflow problem, but it is a bit obvious that's all you are doing. Blinders on and all.
A lot of ridiculous articles about twitter, which is going through a lot of changes. Obviously it will take a while to sort out. Ignore articles till then.
When Musk mentioned hard times ahead, he was not describing Twitter. He was describing the country with Democrats in charge,
What's Emanating,
Now that is some fine, fine snark and, I have been told, the lowest form of humor, almost assholery in nature.
Elon Musk may or may not understand the implications of huge layoffs, in legal terms. I guarantee that NYT reporters do not understand them.
On this day, let us at the NY Times remember the heroic sacrifice of the people that served us at Twitter. The gave all, so we can Tweet without $8/mo. and misunderstand the meaning of both Veteran's and Memorial Day.
"Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn..."
What upcoming economic downturn? What does the author of this piece know that we don't?
MadTownGuy: "What upcoming economic downturn? What does the author of this piece know that we don't?"
The Fed is going to have to crush the economy a la Volcker via rate hikes to tamp down the inflation. It's really going to hurt lower/middle/working class people. As in really really hurt them.
The longer that action is delayed the more massive the pain the will be to correct.
I think it's instructive to be reminded that the media is the Propaganda branch of the Progressive Democrat Administration, so when a message becomes repeated at different outlets, (sometimes using exactly the same word constructions) it's really a stealth policy message.
Having consolidated their power at least for the next 2 years, the media sweep is the cleanup phase. Trump is under attack as usual, much is being made of a Trump / DeSantis tempest-in-a-pisspot, and of course Elon must now be destroyed because he has dared to partition part of the Machine as his own, and is acting like the New Sheriff.
I think Elon is going to prevail, though.
What upcoming economic downturn? What does the author of this piece know that we don't?
Right. Upcoming? The turn happened some months ago. Twitter's high point was 23 February 2021. They had one month's momentum before Biden economics turned them downwards. One might say they already didn't survive, because the remains were sold to becoming something else.
He’s not wrong that the Federal government is a mess. But Biden seems to only be making things worse. In seemingly every move he makes, Biden stumbles into long-known difficulties that Trump had developed ways of managing — but that Biden his eagerness to do everything differently, unthinkingly abandoned....
And it has cost us WAY more than $44 billion.
I'm not sure why everyone is so concerned. Twitter is a private entity and users can create their own platform if it goes bust, or move the Truth Social.
Musk backed out of the deal, the board forced him to buy, the employees were always going to be discombobulated. Layoffs are part of buyouts. No one buys something then continues as the previous control did. You buy it because you see unexploited opportunities. But if you worked for Twitter and denigrated Musk during the offer period, why would you expect to keep your job?
I may be wrong, but I think Elon Musk is well represented by counsel and based on how fast he had people in to review Twitter's coding, he has likely had people reviewing Twitter's personnel contracts for some time before his purchase went through. I have never bought a company, but that may be part of the 'due diligence' process. I think I will wait and see how things actually play out before proclaiming his purchase and post-purchase actions as a failure.
Usually I check those things before buying a company for $44 billion- but that's just me.
If fascistic proglodytes get their wish, and Twitter fails, where will they go to condemn, cancel and cast their enemies into the social, political and cultural darkness?
Got an answer for that, Inga et al?
Ambrose said...
Usually I check those things before buying a company for $44 billion- but that's just me.
************
Yes, everyone knows you're a world-class multi-billionaire who buys companies for billions of dollars.
And yes, of course, we all know you're just flinging snot.
But you have also ignored the FACT that Musk has a phalanx of big-time lawyers advising him every step of the way.
So can bet your flabby, mis-shapen ass that he "checked" before he did the deal.
And ever since.
"Usually I check those things before buying a company for $44 billion- but that's just me."
I am sure your purchases of $44 billion companies have gone well, better than Musk.
You don't know why it was purchased. It could be that twitter and Starlink are related?
Twitter lays off the Lefties. Facebook lays off closet conservatives.
Most of them live in the Bay Area. Twitter can pick and choose from the Facebook layoffs if need be.
Trust is important.
The only one I trust all the way is Jesus.
(Which means I'm a little bit suspicious of everybody else).
That's because all humans are sinners and we screw up our relationships all the time.
Power and money make you arrogant.
The people who started Facebook and Twitter and The New York Times and The Washington Post thought they could say and do any damn thing they wanted, and nobody would notice, and if they did notice, it didn't matter.
Monopoly! Can't touch us!
But what you are doing when you intentionally lie to people is destroy trust. (Jesus called Satan "the Father of Lies").
In the short-term, that can work, and you make a lot of money and get a lot of power. But people who value truth get mad at your ass. And you've put yourself in a world of hurt.
Because now, as you try to rebuild your credibility, you have to tell the truth. And the people who believed in you are devastated.
Netflix management did the same thing with the Woke in its offices. The kids tried to censor and shut down a black artist they didn't like. So, like management everywhere, Netflix had to make a judgment. And they booted some people out of the company.
"second mention" bah.
Better to examine the weird unnecessary injection of age in most news stories..mostly print
Because, if you refer to it out loud, the weirdness us more apparent.
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