He's impulsive and doesn't know when to shut up. I got the distinct impression that, initially, he was absolutely not serious about buying Twitter. It was a joke/jest. BUT, because his antics affected their stock price he actually got forced into the purchase and now he's desperately trying to figure out how to make the purchase worth what he actually paid, which is fine and all, except he seems to be leading by impulse, not by consensus or logic. He wakes up in the morning, has some random ass idea and implements it without any oversight. Even his new CEO straight up admitted that she is basically a straw man CEO who will offer no friction to anything Elon wants to do.
This is pretty much what ive thought all along. He already owned a huge chuck of twotter when he said he'd buy it. The Ftc called him out and accused him of market manipulation. He then tried everything thing he could to weasel his way out of buying twitter but failed. Now he's purposely trashing the site so he can declare bankruptcy and get his money back. That's my theory at least.
When a company declares bankruptcy the only money anyone gets back are the value of the company's assets. Which some quick googling indicates is somewhere around $14B. So $30B less than what he paid for it.
I've heard Twitter was actually worth somewhere around $25B when he bought it. If he did nothing and left it alone for a year and then sold it, yeah he'd have lost around $20B from the whole mess, but that's still better that driving it into bankruptcy.
I think it's more an ego thing. He obviously overpaid for Twitter, and he can't admit he made a mistake, so he's trying to find a way to blame the mistake on the "woke" left or whatever.
I'm really intrigued what the composition of that 14B is. I'm doubting that they have big investments in the stock market, or oil fields, or whatever. It's clear that the core IP of Twitter can be largely re-coded by a few bored guys (we're here aren't we?). If the actual value of Twitter is in the name and userbase, and that gets trashed, then it's certainly not worth 14B.
The code needed to handle as many users as Twitter has isn't trivial.
But yeah most of the value is in the brand and the userbase. A big factor with social media is how it allows people to build friend networks that are bound to the platform. People can esily move to another platform, but convincing all of their friends to do the same is much more difficult. It's insidious how it locks people in.
The fact that Musk is behaving like a complete asshat and people re staying there anyway just goes to prove how valuable that social media lock in is.
Of course AOL was valued similarly... just before the dot com bubble burst.
I buy that too.
Get his money back from whom? It's not like a toaster that he can bring back to the store.
He even tried to get out of it by claiming Twitter had a bot problem. Courts ruled that he stepped too far into the shit to back out of it.
And now, it seems, the alleged bot problem is worse than it's ever been. Sheesh.
This is pretty much what ive thought all along. He already owned a huge chuck of twotter when he said he'd buy it. The Ftc called him out and accused him of market manipulation. He then tried everything thing he could to weasel his way out of buying twitter but failed. Now he's purposely trashing the site so he can declare bankruptcy and get his money back. That's my theory at least.
He's impulsive and doesn't know when to shut up. I got the distinct impression that, initially, he was absolutely not serious about buying Twitter. It was a joke/jest. BUT, because his antics affected their stock price he actually got forced into the purchase and now he's desperately trying to figure out how to make the purchase worth what he actually paid, which is fine and all, except he seems to be leading by impulse, not by consensus or logic. He wakes up in the morning, has some random ass idea and implements it without any oversight. Even his new CEO straight up admitted that she is basically a straw man CEO who will offer no friction to anything Elon wants to do.
This is pretty much what ive thought all along. He already owned a huge chuck of twotter when he said he'd buy it. The Ftc called him out and accused him of market manipulation. He then tried everything thing he could to weasel his way out of buying twitter but failed. Now he's purposely trashing the site so he can declare bankruptcy and get his money back. That's my theory at least.
When a company declares bankruptcy the only money anyone gets back are the value of the company's assets. Which some quick googling indicates is somewhere around $14B. So $30B less than what he paid for it.
I've heard Twitter was actually worth somewhere around $25B when he bought it. If he did nothing and left it alone for a year and then sold it, yeah he'd have lost around $20B from the whole mess, but that's still better that driving it into bankruptcy.
I think it's more an ego thing. He obviously overpaid for Twitter, and he can't admit he made a mistake, so he's trying to find a way to blame the mistake on the "woke" left or whatever.
I'm really intrigued what the composition of that 14B is. I'm doubting that they have big investments in the stock market, or oil fields, or whatever. It's clear that the core IP of Twitter can be largely re-coded by a few bored guys (we're here aren't we?). If the actual value of Twitter is in the name and userbase, and that gets trashed, then it's certainly not worth 14B.
The code needed to handle as many users as Twitter has isn't trivial.
But yeah most of the value is in the brand and the userbase. A big factor with social media is how it allows people to build friend networks that are bound to the platform. People can esily move to another platform, but convincing all of their friends to do the same is much more difficult. It's insidious how it locks people in.
The fact that Musk is behaving like a complete asshat and people re staying there anyway just goes to prove how valuable that social media lock in is.
Of course AOL was valued similarly... just before the dot com bubble burst.
I buy that too.
Get his money back from whom? It's not like a toaster that he can bring back to the store.
He even tried to get out of it by claiming Twitter had a bot problem. Courts ruled that he stepped too far into the shit to back out of it.
And now, it seems, the alleged bot problem is worse than it's ever been. Sheesh.
This is pretty much what ive thought all along. He already owned a huge chuck of twotter when he said he'd buy it. The Ftc called him out and accused him of market manipulation. He then tried everything thing he could to weasel his way out of buying twitter but failed. Now he's purposely trashing the site so he can declare bankruptcy and get his money back. That's my theory at least.