I'd guess that $19 billion is the value where if someone bought it and did their best to undo everything and get it back on track, that's how much it would be worth.
The problem with measuring value is you have to quantify what that $19 billion actually is. Like you could say it's the share price times the number of shares, except now twitter is privately owned we don't have a market share price anymore.
I wonder if that’s a portion of why it’s devalued so much. I mean I know there’s a dozen or more other reasons but brand recognition could very well be one of them.
Can any trademark lawyer in the audience tell us how long before, if Musk lets the trademark lapse, some rando could come along and make a Twitter clone while literally just calling it "Twitter?"
Prince wanted people to call him Prince. He changed his name to that symbol to get out of a shitty contract with Warner Bros.
"Warner Bros took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing took to promote all of the music I wrote," Prince once said in a press release. "The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros."
I don't get that platform. I just signed up for mastodon and am not sure I'm feeling that either.
I feel like these Twitter-style sites are just ...like... Keyboard warriors. It's just smug post after smug post.
It honestly creeps me out. Like I see all these popular political posts by profile icons I recognize.... But every post is just whinging...
Who are these people and why do they get popularity and even mentioned on the news as truth when their posts have no sources and are just bullshit political emotion. Then you read a news article that "Twitter is cancelling....". All because there was one post about with someone acting like a dick.
In its ideal form, a microblog style site could literally provide an online version of a collective consciousness of society. It would be a live feed of normal people's thoughts.
Except in reality it's porn, smug posting, corporate advertising, vitriol, and propaganda all fueled by algorithms written to keep mofos scrolling.
Honestly the format is good for stuff like quick business headlines and rumors that you could use if you're trading (basically free "squawk", given that professional squawk services cost a lot). It's also good to quickly spread the word during protests or similar.
But I agree that all of that is still offset by the huge amount of smugness and "ratio" competitions.
I think the whole point is that it gives media companies something to pretend is “news,” and everyone else something to be pretend-outraged over. Full stop.
To put this in perspective, they lost an average of $2B per month in value. According to HUD, there were about 582,000 homeless people in the US last year. $2B per month is enough to house all of them nearly 4 times over if you assume $1k per month in housing expenses.
What a monumental waste of resources that could have made a difference. Musk just sucks
It's not real money, though. It's all just speculative value based on estimates of future revenue.
The real barrier to ending homelessness is the large number of real estate vacancies that are held open to prop up the price of the housing market. Twitter's lost value has nothing to do with that.
But the 44B was payed, so they do/did exist. Now he could have just NOT bought twitter and spent half of this money on the poor et voilà no more homeless for at least 4 years.
There is no "real" money. It's all speculative based on what value people assign to it. For example, you may have noticed that the US dollar has become worth significantly less in recent years. Shares and fiat currency just have different volatility.
Musk raised $44B of real money to buy Twitter and bring it into private ownership. I'm saying had he just left well enough alone, he could have used that money for other purposes
Your point on adding more supply to the real estate market to prop up prices is the opposite of Econ 101 - more supply, all things equal, will reduce prices. Mental health is a much larger barrier to receiving help for the homeless.
I used to volunteer weekly with homeless and housing insecure people in Philadelphia and untreated mental health or substance abuse was an issue for many. There are also barriers to receiving government aid that would assist them because many programs require an address or the process is unnecessarily complicated.
Housing is just one step. They would also require a great deal of counseling, job training, and medical attention to reintegration into society. Anyway, my point was simply to illustrate what a magnificent waste of resources it was to buy Twitter.
all the people that imagine their home prices are as high as they are, will fight tooth and nail to prevent this. the empty house market is crazy, just look on a "social home sharing site". houses are hotels for the few.
Almost immediately after buying it, Elon enshittified the site - and not only that, but changed it's branding from one of the most recognisable names/logos in the world to a fucking "X" (almost always suffixed with "formerly Twitter" so people actually remember what the fuck it is)
That's because it isn't worth nearly that.
It was estimated at around $20 bil when he bought it. Since then he has more than cut revenue in half. The value today is at most $ 10 bil.
Except Musk has added a burden of $ 20 bil in debt, causing interest cost of $1.5 bil per year.
Twitter was not earning money when Musk bought it, but now it operates at huge deficits, and has huge negative internal value.
So the company has a net negative value. The only value may come from losses being tax deductible to a buyer. But that too is worth way less than the debt. Any value is completely speculative, based on a belief against evidence, that the company can still be turned around.
And tax deductions on a loss are still a loss. Tax write-offs are a partial mitigation. They're taken off income, not directly from taxes.
If your tax rate is 25% and you write off a $100 loss, you still lose a net $75. Yeah, if you make negative money you may avoid some taxes entirely, but not all. There's still payroll tax, property tax, sales tax, and more that are isolated from corporate income tax.
A write-off will never make a company that's losing money before taxes profitable. They just soften the blow.
She's gotta be getting some serious compensation to throw her reputation in the garbage like this. I just can't see how it makes any other sense for her in the long run.
Its funny how this headline keeps coming up every couple of weeks with a smaller number each time.
I dont know how they generate these evaluations, and honestly I dont even trust they are accurate. Or care, my life is fully uneffected by the success or failure of that site.
But it is always funny to read the new nearly identical headline with the number shifted down by 1-4 billion from last time.
Fidelity does this because they invested in Twitter alongside Musk, and as a bank they are required by law to disclose the current value of their assets. They come up with a value of their stake, then the rest of us divide that by the percentage Fidelity owns to get the value of the company.
This guy has the attention span of a circus flea, doesn't he?
I'm high af and buying Twitter. Hate speech is lol because I feel unloved. Advertisers you go now, you damned J's. We don't need qualified staff for 2.0 I know how to paste code. Ok now we're gonna make hella $ with "verified". Shit. Ok I gotta unplug some servers and refactor. I know PHP. A child looked me in the eyes but he couldn't see into me like I know the others do. Now we're X for some reason. Now we're revenue sharing. I like to lie. Now we're subscriptions, babby. No we're gonna facilitate financial transactions in a challenge to the banking sector now cuz they got my nuts in a fukkin' vice here Linda!
Transforming Twitter into an 'everything' app is a terrible idea. Why?
Take WeChat, for example. Initially a messaging app, it now incorporates a multitude of services including short video clips similar to YouTube, Twitter-like posts (for friends only), a wallet linked to a bank card, and more. One of my Chinese friends said, 'You won't find anyone in China who doesn't use WeChat because it has everything we need!' It seems that users are quite satisfied with the services WeChat provides.
However, they may be overlooking the drawbacks of such centralized applications:
Privacy issues: Identity verification is required; without it, most features are inaccessible.
Censorship: I suspect that all communications are stored on a central server, with algorithms designed to detect sensitive content or keywords related to politics, NSFW material, etc. Since it's linked to your identity, you could easily end up on a blacklist.
Account suspension: The developer has the power to suspend accounts at any time due to the centralized nature of the system.
Security risks: If someone gains access to your phone or passcode, they could access your money, your contacts' information, and your personal details, since it's an 'everything' app.
Manipulation: Show those news that the country or the company want us to, hide those that are not helpful to them.
These issues and risks are inherent in centralized platforms and social media but consolidating them into an 'everything' app only amplifies the risks. My friend mentioned that WeChat hasn't introduced a subscription fee yet, but Twitter and other services have.
I mean, an 'everything' app might be feasible in a restricted country like China, in the United States? Hell not!
But, Big Tech and governments have the monopolistic power to make these things happen, so we have to find alternatives. The sooner we migrate, the sooner we can reduce the risks that I mentioned above.
The digital world is incredible, but also dangerous. It's best that we start protecting our own privacy rights, our right to speak freely, and our right to control our own minds and discern the truth.
Wechat als always had the backing of the central government. They got funding and, probably more important, the government slowed or outright banned other apps. The Verge has a good piece on it.
However, they may be overlooking the drawbacks of such centralized applications
My guy it's wechat. It's china. The drawbacks are that they are chinese.
Nobody questions the drawbacks of your entire life being on an app and you being valued on a social score.
I'm only starting to realize now that the Fediverse kinda follows the unix philosophy of purpose-built interconnectable pieces interfacing with each other. It's much better than the alternative of just slapping everything into one cumbersome pile.
I'm not very well versed in the Fediverse so this may be wrong.
No, you're right. Theoretically, you could even have a single login for multiple Fediverse sites (Mastodon, Lemmy, PeerTube, etc.).
Technically speaking, I believe you could even comment on this thread via Mastodon if you wanted to since both Lemmy and Mastodon use something called the ActivityPub protocol. But the reverse isn't true since Lemmy isn't configured correctly to view Mastodon content.
There's a lot of drama around him, and some because of his own stupidity and pot stirring, but maybe the world could do with more like him.
Though he may not be self-made in the sense of lifting himself out of poverty into success. He does work pretty damn hard to forward his companies and the goals he sets, so that's admirable.
Surely a big reason he gets so much flak is because he enjoys being in the public eye, unlike Bezos, for example.
Public figures like Musk draw an annoying and undeserved amout of attention, though. I mean there's so much else happening in the world more worthy of our time, but that doesn't generate ad-revenue now does it?
He was a white kid in South Africa. Even if he was dirt poor and born into a broken home, in he was still further ahead than most of the country. Born at least on first or second base.
He had an upbringing of privilege. Mental and physical healthcare, plenty of food, fancy trips and parties, tutors and tuition, as much money as he wanted to start businesses; dude never wanted for anything. Elon being self made is an absolute lie.
Remember bidders that Twitter...ahem...X?.. X... Okay...X... Still has employees...really?...employees that are clearly loyal and easily controllable, as well as a nominal amount of IT equipment.
There are methodical ways of valuating a private (and public) company. Some are pessimistic and some are wildly optimistic. Your can legally use whichever one you want, only you must only use that valuation method for everything. It's illegal to value the company low for taxes and high for loan collateral. And if you sell it, you can owe back taxes if your valuation was off (sale price is the new valuation).
This is overly-simplified US accounting rules (from finance class 10 years ago)
That's what X is valuing itself at, not what it's worth. We'll get a better sense of what it's worth when it goes back on the market or goes bankrupt, whichever happens first. Right now I have a hard time imagining anyone would pay that much for it. For context Snapchat, which has had a lot more success with advertising lately, is worth about $16 billion.
Works hard to forward his companies like X which lost billions in value cos of his stupidity? Where's his Hyperloop? I wouldn't buy a Tesla if it were the only car in existence. I'm even tired of his name.
Yea..Parag is a badass. Musk was trying to weasel out of the deal but Parag made him buy it and to make the deal even better, Parag got fired, which gave him millions of dollars for free (golden parachute).
consider where the stock was trading at the year before he bought it. he got a discount, basically. a lot of people who had been holding shares lost money to the richest guy on earth. and then he threw the money away burning down Twitter.
Hadn't it already massively dropped in value before the purchase was finalized, and that's why he wanted to back out? How is everybody overlooking that?
Twitter was never worth anywhere close to the 40 billion he publicly announced he'd pay for it whether or not a "significant" drop before purchase occurred.