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To me this whole thing is pretty simple if you understand Elon’s history. He’s a master pumper/promoter much like P.T. Barnum. He’s currently attempting to infl
by dkrich 4y ago
To me this whole thing is pretty simple if you understand Elon’s history. He’s a master pumper/promoter much like P.T. Barnum. He’s currently attempting to inflate twitter’s perceived value after being forced to buy it by going on and on about how “alive” the site is now (despite no real changes) with much higher engagement.
I’m betting he takes the site public again in <6 months. What’s amazing though is the endless obsession with Elon by people who should know better and how they will blindly believe any and all things he says. Not even a hint of skepticism. So I imagine the IPO will garner a ton of interest and buyers who will overpay. Still Elon will probably take a massive loss on this deal unless the market recovers a great deal by then.
Both things can be true by the way- Twitter was a massive dumpster fire due to having no leadership for a long time AND Elon could be trying to pump and dump it. I think in general Twitter’s value is overestimated by its users by a huge factor. If it vanished it might leave a void in people’s day but it would not have any meaningful impact on society.
FWIW I don’t think it will vanish because while it’s a relatively small portion of society who use it regularly those users are incredibly sticky and aren’t going anywhere. After all this is over and it’s taken public again I suspect it will be largely the same site.
- thinkingemote 4y agoAgreed. He has explicitly said he intends to take it public once it starts making money at the same levels of other tech companies (I.e. via reducing headcount and increasing income from users) I don't think he is worried about any loss it might make if it doesn't work out, people are putting too much value on that but only as it would impact the ability to get funds for future endeavours.
- mhoad 4y agoWhy on earth would you say that someone is not worried about losing a $44 billion investment? That’s really not based on reality and the number of random changes they are currently pushing with zero strategic foresight makes it very clear that despite the blistering they are very much concerned.
- dkrich 4y agoYep and if you look at it through that lens it all becomes fairly predictable. Bringing trump back presumably increases controversy and engagement. Everything he does between now and taking it public will be to maximize attention no matter what. Expect many more off the cuff decisions/announcements in the coming weeks. As an aside it would be interesting if after all this football spiking by the Elon fans about how dispensable Twitter engineers are (I don’t have a strong opinion on this not really knowing the answer) the site does end up suffering a major outage due to a hack or something else. Given the number of personnel and policy changes that have seemingly been made with no planning or thought the odds of that would seem better than zero.