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Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue
- drumhead 3y agoWhen the Bluesky and the Facebook competitors launch I can see a lot of big firms moving across to those and leaving Twitter behind. Twitter is going to become the Fox news of social media I think. Lots of hardcore maga, funded by ads from the same people that advertise on Fox News.
- _ea1k 3y agoI think that is far from guaranteed. Most people aren't reading twitter to see what Fox news, or any other media company, thinks the news should be about.
- BossingAround 3y ago[flagged]
- gruez 3y ago>I am not a Twitter user, and at this point, my idea of "what's Twitter's content" is pretty much "mostly MAGA." what makes you think this?
- notahacker 3y agoApart from the CEO's posturing, it seems like the "More Tweets" shown around other tweets to unregistered users are now heavily skewed towards that demographic even when wildly irrelevant to the actual content being looked at (the popularity of certain commentators producing that sort of content isn't exactly unique to Twitter, and nor is the other irrelevant tweets mostly being cat pics, but I suspect the fact that nearly all the politics Twitter randomly surfaces to people who haven't cultivated a profile with the opposite preferences is of that ilk probably reflects who buys the blue ticks...)
- drcongo 3y agoI think you're rather missing the point the parent was making. It doesn't matter what you're there for, if the experience feels Fox-News-like, a lot of people will leave. The people remaining will be those who like Fox News.
- hackernewds 3y agoFox news is the biggest news organization in the US by viewership, which seems to be a positive shift then? This does not reflect in the numbers
- Kye 3y agoThe highest rated cable news program is still a drop in the bucket. It's just not that many people. It's up there with large niche YouTube channels: popular in their space like a Linus Tech Tips or Contrapoints, but most people have never heard of them. More people watch Stephen Colbert poke fun at Fox News than watch Fox News. Almost no one gets their news from Fox News, or cable news in general. People who do are less informed.
- scarface_74 3y agoYes. But mainstream advertisers stay away from many of the talk shows on Fox News.
- kthejoker2 3y agoNo, it's a negative shift. Twitter trying to be a Fox News is reducing their total addressable market and value, you understand that, right? They had a business that (in theory) appealed to every human on the planet. Now they don't. It's shedding its userbase as a result. Not to mention the Venn diagram between "people who are not already on Twitter and are evaluating Twitter as a platform to use" and "Fox News / right wing information consumers" has a very narrow overlap.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- drcongo 3y ago
- Maxamillion96 3y agoIt’s the Yahoo comment section at this point, especially for blue checks. No one who can post would pay 8 dollars a month, so it’s all hustlebro scammers or idiotic conspiracy theories.
- ethanbond 3y agoOne of the most brilliant ideas: Put the content of people who need to pay for engagement, whether due to their own psychoses or due to the fact they produce garbage content, above anyone who organically produces engaging content. 140 IQ move
- strict9 3y agoI don't know. With Jack confidently predicting a conspiracy theorist will win the presidency, it tells me Bluesky isn't going to be my destination. In fact I'm at a stage in my life where the idea of social media participation just isn't appealing any more.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoNot only predicting the presidency, but explicitly providing endorsement for them!
- hackernewds 3y agoDelusions of grandeur when tech executives have begun to believe, and pursue that their followers develop them a cult of personality and subvert the Democratic process.
- KptMarchewa 3y agoMaybe, but Dorsey's political opinions didn't influence Twitter's operations that much, at least compared to current owner's ones.
- EA-3167 3y agoThis is the key. People and companies aren't fleeing Twitter because of what Musk believes, they're fleeing because of what he does.
- rsynnott 3y agoPeople sometimes compare Musk to Howard Hughes. This is unfair, on Hughes; as far as I know, if you bought a plane from him he rarely showed up at your house to insist that you not eat large peas. Musk, by contrast, tends to inflict his neuroses on his user base. (Also, Hughes largely stayed out of direct running of his important businesses when he was in his pea-sizing phase, as far as I know)
- rcme 3y ago
- _ea1k 3y ago[flagged]
- tyingq 3y agoThere is a fair amount of editorializing. But, this part remains newsworthy: "But Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times. The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said." https://archive.is/j9Swy https://archive.is/j9Swy
- smotched 3y agonot really, literally every ad network has went down compared to last year.
- tyingq 3y agoThere's a slump, but not down 30% to 60%. Google, for example isn't down for Q1/23 ad revenue, just slower than expected growth.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slmlm 3y agoTwitter's employee base is down by >80% Twitter has closed down 1 out of their 3 data centers (Sacramento), meaning data center costs are down by ~33% ad revenue dropping by ~60% is... a win? There's probably a more accurate way to slice this but at first glance it looks ok to me.
- tyingq 3y agoDid you maybe reply to the wrong comment? I'm agreeing down 60% is unusual.
- hker999 3y ago[flagged]
- drcongo 3y agoTwitter under Musk complies with more government demands than it did previously [0]. It was a Republican governing party making the requests prior to Musk taking over. How do these facts fit with your preconceptions? [0] https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-orders/ https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...
- johnlocke8 3y ago[flagged]
- pixl97 3y agoSome people are getting to see how authoritarians work in real time. Authoritarian: "The people I don't like are stomping on babies!" Unliked group: "Hold up, we actually have video of you baby stomping" Auth: "See, see, see, I told you they were going to make stuff up and accuse me of being the bad guy, this is evidence they are bad" Middle Ground Guy: "Well, I guess both sides are bad"
- taylodl 3y agoTwitter exposed no corruption, just the same worn-out conspiracy theories Fox News has been peddling for some time now. Users have seen the writing on the wall and realizing what the new Twitter is - a Fox News social media outlet. So they're abandoning the platform as a result. As the users leave then so are the advertisers. That's just how the advertising business works.
- krapp 3y agoIf you're referring to the "Twitter Files," Twitter's own lawyers just admitted that it was all just a viral marketing campaign and didn't actually show any evidence of wrongdoing[0]. It was all smoke and mirrors bullshit, like Hunter Biden's briefcase, like the "treason" hidden within the DNC hacks, like Pizzagate, like the Benghazi hearings. [0]https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1664634500343529472.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1664634500343529472.html
- paulsutter 3y agoI use Twitter to keep up on AI and the new space industry (there really is no alternative). Revenue could shrink further and none of that would be lost. Growing revenue could let them improve things I don't care about (spaces, video, payments, etc). I guess yay for them if they improve revenue, yawn if they don't.
- phyrex 3y agoWhat a shortsighted view! Do you think Twitter operates out of the goodness of their hearts and will continue to let you keep up on Ai and new space in the face of losing money? Do you think what’s there will just do to help working without active maintenance? Do you think the servers that make all this possible are running for free?
- paulsutter 3y agoTheir revenue is massively larger than the cost to run their servers (I used to run 3000 physical servers with a small team, it doesn't cost much) > advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million
- saryant 3y agoYou’re off by a couple orders of magnitude on what it takes to run Twitter.
- dragontamer 3y agoAd revenue is mostly tied to sales people talking with big companies, addressing their issues. For example: Southwest airlines has a huge number of advertisements across the internet. But Southwest doesn't want these advertisements to appear next to airport disasters. This kind of "custom request" is the bulk of $Millions+ revenues. You need to constantly cater to these company's seemingly arbitrary requests as they try to protect their brand. Twitter fired the team that did this. And when they did, the big companies that care about their image left.
- sidcool 3y agoI still blame Jack Dorsey. He seriously has very little to show for what he did at Twitter for a decade.
- bdcravens 3y agoHe created a business, with about $13B in funding, which the richest guy on the planet (at the time) wanted to buy for $44B. I'd say that's a bit more than "very little".
- hackernewds 3y agoand he's on the path of obliterating Square, now flippantly renamed to Block. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/judge-calls-blocks-purchase-of-tidal-a-terrible-business-decision-but-rejects-shareholder-lawsuit-5248c40a https://www.marketwatch.com/story/judge-calls-blocks-purchas...
- kossTKR 3y agoIgnoring the political drama twitter has just fallen so much in quality the last 6 months it will soon be useless if not fixed. It's like the feed is becoming an addiction machine, just like youtube has already done before Tiktok perfected this "you can't control shit, just watch endless streams of our garbage."
- swimorsinka 3y agoGiven that 2/3rds of the employees are now gone, doesn’t this mean that the business is still viable?
- swarnie 3y agoI'd struggle to name a period where this company has ever been viable. Even in profitable years (year??) the profit per employee was woeful.
- kalleboo 3y agoIt may have been if he hadn't saddled the company with massive debt
- Balgair 3y agoI think Elon owes ~120M/mo. just in debt servicing, let alone costs of doing business. So, 88M/mo. is just not going to cut it.
- anigbrowl 3y agoWhy not just fire everyone, and Elon can run it on 1% of its original revenue? brb, drafting a valuation of my economic activity at randint(10^9)
- mcphage 3y ago> Revenue could shrink further and none of that would be lost. How so? If Twitter goes under due to debts and lack of revenue, all of that will disappear.
- seydor 3y agoHave they tried to reduce their ad prices by 59% ?
- more_corn 3y agoJust wait for it. His master stroke is coming. I have no idea what it is. Everything he has done seems insane and counterproductive. But that’s how genius works. Unless it’s not genius.
- softbt 3y agoDoubt it’s genius, he’s declining mentally
- nbittich 3y agoPaywall, not gonna read it.
- unforeseen9991 3y agohttps://archive.ph/ethjY https://archive.ph/ethjY