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Ad based businesses are getting hit hard, which explains the desire to switch to subscription based models. It doesn’t help when someone like Elon is chasing a

Ad based businesses are getting hit hard, which explains the desire to switch to subscription based models. It doesn’t help when someone like Elon is chasing away advertisers with so much success. With the layoffs they’ve had I wonder how net profit etc are going to shape up. Since Twitter is now private a lot of numbers and finance info is going to be just hearsay and rumors… but things almost certainly can’t be going well.

sebzim4500 4y ago
>but things almost certainly can’t be going well. Is that obvious? Didn't they fire way more than 40% of the workforce? Presumably that was the biggest expense, so they should be much closer to profitable now than they were before.
- drcongo 4y ago
  The fact that they're being sued by the landlord of their offices because they can't pay the rent seems like a good indicator.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Not just physical rents. The Information reports that Twitter is at least $70 million behind on their AWS bills: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musk-delayed-paying-twitters-amazon-cloud-bill-sparking-ad-threat?rc=4ypc5n https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musk-delayed-paying-... Amazon is retaliating by not paying their Twitter ad bills, which seems like the kind of thing that can be effective against the Trump-Musk school of business operations.
    - DharmaPolice 4y ago
      Couldn't they just retaliate by stopping their AWS service? Isn't that what happens when you don't pay your bill?
      - moron4hire 4y ago
        That's kind of like the trope of a loan shark "busting people's legs". It doesn't do any good, because then they can't work to make the money they need to pay off the loan shark.
        bawolff 4y ago
        Threats only work if you carry them out when someone calls your bluff. The loan shark is interested in making sure everyone else pays.
      - interactivecode 4y ago
        just revoke their account and wipe their databases :-) like every other account that's behind on their bills
      - mleo 4y ago
        There is a 5-year contract in place, so a little different than just a credit card on file that is failing to charge based on usage. Also, it was reported they aren’t using the compute power as expected in contract, so the bill may not fully relate to actual resources consumed.
    - bawolff 4y ago
      That's insane. Why isn't amazon just pulling the plug? I imagine that with 40% staff, twitter now lacks the institutional knowledge to switch providers. Seems like amazon cutting them off would be a really effective way for amazon to make sure that they get paid first.
      - lapcat 4y ago
        > Seems like amazon cutting them off would be a really effective way for amazon to make sure that they get paid first. Or an effective way of killing Twitter, losing their money and a customer forever. Amazon can afford to play a patient game of tit-for-tat.
        bawolff 4y ago
        I don't think so. An hour of downtime isn't going to kill twitter (One assumes that twitter has it together enough to pay ASAP once site goes down), and once you do it once to prove you're serious you probably never have to do it again and will get paid on time forever after.
        lapcat 4y ago
        > One assumes that twitter has it together enough to pay ASAP once site goes down I don't assume that. ;-)
        sebzim4500 4y ago
        I would imagine AWS desperately wants to avoid a reputation as someone who will shut down a x billion dollar business over an unpaid bill. They will try every reasonable remedy to recover the money before taking the nuclear option.
      - JPKab 4y ago
        Do you really believe this report? "Twitter sales and marketing staff were told by their colleagues that Amazon had threatened to withhold payment for advertising it runs on Twitter". My experience with sales and marketing staff at virtually every company I've ever worked is that they are morons. I simply don't believe that AWS would allow this to continue without shutting them down. There's no way a contract allows for them to rack up bills like this. The comment you're replying to features the "Trump-Musk" line, which is strongly indicative of an incredibly biased person whose allowed politics to hijack their brain. Comparing Musk to Trump is just absurd.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    if they went from >7000 to <2000 he might be trying to hardball renegotiate or terminate overpriced contracts to house that no longer existent army of workers that were probably put in place even before covid. Who knows since they are private, but that's what we're currently facing in SF ourselves - an empty office with a multiyear lease that nobody knows what the f to do with.
    - jeromegv 4y ago
      Sure he's trying to hardball, but he's also doing that with his Amazon bills, which can hardly be seen as a good sign.
- JanSt 4y ago
  They also have to pay a ton of additional interest and lost a lot of revenue
- d_e_solomon 4y ago
  From the article: > In an update to investors, Twitter reported a decline of about 40% year-over-year in both revenue and adjusted earnings for the month, the people said. If adjusted earnings are down 40% - which is a non GAAP way of measuring profit and usually more aggressive - Twitter is much further away from being profitable than it was pre-Musk.
- code_runner 4y ago
  A lot of severance but I don’t know how/where that is accounted for in stuff like this. I assume you are correct thought and they are on that path.
JPKab 4y ago
How much was it him "chasing away advertisers" vs activists pushing boycotts?
- Pxtl 4y ago
  Isn't that kind of the same thing? If you're so controversial that people successfully call to boycott you personally, is that not chasing away paying customers?
- jeromegv 4y ago
  Does not matter how much activist push to boycott, they aren't the ones paying the bills. There's been activist calls to boycott facebooks for so many years now and it has hardly made a dent into Facebook ads spending because companies know they make a good ROI from IG and FB ads. It's a business decision if you want to keep spending your advertising dollars on Twitter, and if for whatever reason the ROI is not there anymore, then you drop your advertising budget. Why is the ROI not there anymore? You have to ask.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > There's been activist calls to boycott facebooks for so many years now and it has hardly made a dent into Facebook ads spending because companies know they make a good ROI from IG and FB ads. Usually because Reddit and Facebook actually act on public outrage and close down hate groups.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Companies don’t care how “organic” a particular moment of public outage is. To make marketing decisions, they gauge the impact on their current and future business. If activists get public traction that will affect sales, the company will do something about it.
- the_duke 4y ago
  The advertisers care about "brand safety", which Musk completely undermined with his verification changes and the following wave of meme accounts impersonating companies. The changes were quickly rolled back to put safeguards and new check marks in place, but by that point a lot of advertisers had already decided to freeze their spending or even stop their campaigns. The wave of un-bans also didn't help. A screenshot was circulating of an Erasmus (student exchange program) ad appearing right under the tweet of a freshly un-banned Nazi, raving against some minority group. I doubt the woke activism made a big difference.
CyberDildonics 4y ago
Ad based businesses are getting hit hard What are you basing this on?
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Google and Meta earnings saying that cost per click is down around 15%

sebzim4500 4y ago

>but things almost certainly can’t be going well. Is that obvious? Didn't they fire way more than 40% of the workforce? Presumably that was the biggest expense, so they should be much closer to profitable now than they were before.

drcongo 4y ago
The fact that they're being sued by the landlord of their offices because they can't pay the rent seems like a good indicator.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Not just physical rents. The Information reports that Twitter is at least $70 million behind on their AWS bills: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musk-delayed-paying-twitters-amazon-cloud-bill-sparking-ad-threat?rc=4ypc5n https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musk-delayed-paying-... Amazon is retaliating by not paying their Twitter ad bills, which seems like the kind of thing that can be effective against the Trump-Musk school of business operations.
  - DharmaPolice 4y ago
    Couldn't they just retaliate by stopping their AWS service? Isn't that what happens when you don't pay your bill?
    - moron4hire 4y ago
      That's kind of like the trope of a loan shark "busting people's legs". It doesn't do any good, because then they can't work to make the money they need to pay off the loan shark.
      - bawolff 4y ago
        Threats only work if you carry them out when someone calls your bluff. The loan shark is interested in making sure everyone else pays.
    - interactivecode 4y ago
      just revoke their account and wipe their databases :-) like every other account that's behind on their bills
    - mleo 4y ago
      There is a 5-year contract in place, so a little different than just a credit card on file that is failing to charge based on usage. Also, it was reported they aren’t using the compute power as expected in contract, so the bill may not fully relate to actual resources consumed.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    That's insane. Why isn't amazon just pulling the plug? I imagine that with 40% staff, twitter now lacks the institutional knowledge to switch providers. Seems like amazon cutting them off would be a really effective way for amazon to make sure that they get paid first.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > Seems like amazon cutting them off would be a really effective way for amazon to make sure that they get paid first. Or an effective way of killing Twitter, losing their money and a customer forever. Amazon can afford to play a patient game of tit-for-tat.
      - bawolff 4y ago
        I don't think so. An hour of downtime isn't going to kill twitter (One assumes that twitter has it together enough to pay ASAP once site goes down), and once you do it once to prove you're serious you probably never have to do it again and will get paid on time forever after.
        lapcat 4y ago
        > One assumes that twitter has it together enough to pay ASAP once site goes down I don't assume that. ;-)
        sebzim4500 4y ago
        I would imagine AWS desperately wants to avoid a reputation as someone who will shut down a x billion dollar business over an unpaid bill. They will try every reasonable remedy to recover the money before taking the nuclear option.
    - JPKab 4y ago
      Do you really believe this report? "Twitter sales and marketing staff were told by their colleagues that Amazon had threatened to withhold payment for advertising it runs on Twitter". My experience with sales and marketing staff at virtually every company I've ever worked is that they are morons. I simply don't believe that AWS would allow this to continue without shutting them down. There's no way a contract allows for them to rack up bills like this. The comment you're replying to features the "Trump-Musk" line, which is strongly indicative of an incredibly biased person whose allowed politics to hijack their brain. Comparing Musk to Trump is just absurd.
- twelve40 4y ago
  if they went from >7000 to <2000 he might be trying to hardball renegotiate or terminate overpriced contracts to house that no longer existent army of workers that were probably put in place even before covid. Who knows since they are private, but that's what we're currently facing in SF ourselves - an empty office with a multiyear lease that nobody knows what the f to do with.
  - jeromegv 4y ago
    Sure he's trying to hardball, but he's also doing that with his Amazon bills, which can hardly be seen as a good sign.
JanSt 4y ago
They also have to pay a ton of additional interest and lost a lot of revenue
d_e_solomon 4y ago
From the article: > In an update to investors, Twitter reported a decline of about 40% year-over-year in both revenue and adjusted earnings for the month, the people said. If adjusted earnings are down 40% - which is a non GAAP way of measuring profit and usually more aggressive - Twitter is much further away from being profitable than it was pre-Musk.
code_runner 4y ago
A lot of severance but I don’t know how/where that is accounted for in stuff like this. I assume you are correct thought and they are on that path.

JPKab 4y ago

How much was it him "chasing away advertisers" vs activists pushing boycotts?

Pxtl 4y ago
Isn't that kind of the same thing? If you're so controversial that people successfully call to boycott you personally, is that not chasing away paying customers?
jeromegv 4y ago
Does not matter how much activist push to boycott, they aren't the ones paying the bills. There's been activist calls to boycott facebooks for so many years now and it has hardly made a dent into Facebook ads spending because companies know they make a good ROI from IG and FB ads. It's a business decision if you want to keep spending your advertising dollars on Twitter, and if for whatever reason the ROI is not there anymore, then you drop your advertising budget. Why is the ROI not there anymore? You have to ask.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > There's been activist calls to boycott facebooks for so many years now and it has hardly made a dent into Facebook ads spending because companies know they make a good ROI from IG and FB ads. Usually because Reddit and Facebook actually act on public outrage and close down hate groups.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Companies don’t care how “organic” a particular moment of public outage is. To make marketing decisions, they gauge the impact on their current and future business. If activists get public traction that will affect sales, the company will do something about it.
the_duke 4y ago
The advertisers care about "brand safety", which Musk completely undermined with his verification changes and the following wave of meme accounts impersonating companies. The changes were quickly rolled back to put safeguards and new check marks in place, but by that point a lot of advertisers had already decided to freeze their spending or even stop their campaigns. The wave of un-bans also didn't help. A screenshot was circulating of an Erasmus (student exchange program) ad appearing right under the tweet of a freshly un-banned Nazi, raving against some minority group. I doubt the woke activism made a big difference.

CyberDildonics 4y ago

Ad based businesses are getting hit hard What are you basing this on?

HDThoreaun 4y ago
Google and Meta earnings saying that cost per click is down around 15%