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a) He's not the richest person on earth. b) His track record in general is not without faults. c) His track record with Twitter is clear for everyone to see.

• somenameforme 3y ago
  Revenue doesn't matter, profit does. Articles focusing on the former are being intentionally disingenuous. Twitter's employed headcount has fallen to to ~1800 from 7500, and their contractor headcount to ~1100 from 5500. And among the layoffs include most (all?) of the former executive positions, many of which drew quite absurd comp. For instance Vijaya Gadde's final comp was ~$17 million for a year. That's going to be a dramatic decrease in costs. Their revenue since is going to be difficult if not impossible to fairly assess. Many (most?) of the largest advertisers like Apple/Amazon have returned, but likely with discounted enticements which, to my knowledge, are not public. So all one can do is speculate. I think the only fair conclusion is that it's hardly doomsday for Twitter, but it's also not quite time for a victory parade either. I genuinely hope alternatives, especially decentralized ones, succeed. Competition improves everybody. But the reason Elon spent $40 billion on Twitter is not for the software, but for the users. Network effect is seemingly impossible to overcome, regardless of the merit of a site.