5 ms·

Musk's $44B Twitter now valued at just $9.4B as X

14 points by arromatic 2y ago

arromatic 2y ago
1. Is creating a proper twitter alternative that difficult ? What is google , msft and maybe companies in entire eu (and us) doing ? 2. Is there a chance twitter will be sold ? or a get a government bail out . Twitter's reach is too valuable to let it go bankrupt/ crash .
- downrightmike 2y ago
  Its now worth less than the worse case scenario that the banks believed
  - arromatic 2y ago
    That 13b bank loan alone could build another twitter with more revenue .
- not_your_vase 2y ago
  The problem is not technical. The main task is convincing the masses to use it. When there was only 1 player (twitter), it was a trivial thing. When the market is fractured, it gets more exciting.
  - arromatic 2y ago
    Exciting assuming the future apps or users are too excited to choose alternative ? I don't really think there are any proper alternative on the market even after a year for users to move . Bluesky ? no algo , Threads ? no politics and meta , t2/pebble ? bankrupt .
    - talldayo 2y ago
      I'm just going to address the elephant in the room: Twitter, before Elon's takeover, was a crypto-obsessed political echo chamber. You cannot get an "alternative" to it because people refuse to acknowledge that Twitter was never all that great in the first place. You can never go home, as they say, and that applies to old versions of social media just as well. You will never, ever have an alternative where all your friends and role-models post on the same network. It just doesn't happen, ever. Not with Twitter, and not with a Twitter alternative - your expectations aren't realistic, and so you're bound to be disappointed until your outlook changes. If you're willing to adjust your expectations and use a smaller network, you can still enjoy social media. You just have to stop treating it as an attention-stealing exercise where you're in competition with your peers to get noticed by "the world". Platforms like Mastodon are great, as long as you don't rely on likes and reposts for dopamine.
      - arromatic 2y ago
        If you are a hobbyist writing blogs for fun and not spending hours doing seo for google old twitter was the only way your post / site could be delivered to your intended audience . You wrote a post about the latest python update ? Twitter will deliver it to python liking cluster . Something no other social media does nor do search engines like google where only limited sites are shown .
        talldayo 2y ago
        You vastly overestimate how many people actually use Twitter. The "python liking cluster" does not uniformly hang out on Twitter - maybe like less than ~3% of them probably still use the site. Also, X will happily downrank your content if it isn't controversial enough to be viral. After all, your python-likers aren't reading on a chronological timeline. They're being fed an algorithm of doomscrolling - finding your posts on the site is little more than a beneficial mistake. You can continue to cling to Twitter until the corpse is cold and they've replaced the blue branding with black, if you wanted. People are both stockholm-syndromed to the app in an unhealthy way and addicted to attention-seeking in ways that X knowingly exploits for ad revenue and premium subscription tithes. It will only get worse!
- gregjor 2y ago
  I think Twitter needs a new CEO/owner, not alternatives. Personally I don't use Twitter/X anymore, it has no value to me, but I understand some people find it valuable. Twitter cannot survive at current scale with any reasonable subscription price. If advertisers come back and it shows enough ads to turn a profit users will get sick of the ads, it will turn into Facebook.
  - arromatic 2y ago
    Twitter was doing okay (maybe not) before pre-musk without being another facebook . New owner is actually the best option in my opinion too , but I don't think anyone is willing to buy it for 44b .
  - timeon 2y ago
    > Twitter cannot survive at current scale with any reasonable subscription price. Twitter was not bought to make money. Twitter is expenditure for narrative control.
    - xenospn 2y ago
      That is correct. Valuation is irrelevant.
    - gregjor 2y ago
      We’ll see how long Twitter can bleed out. Even Musk can’t afford it forever.
      - arromatic 2y ago
        My bet is on bail-out or resell to msft . Google is possible which would be nice assuming same treatment as yt but meta is unlikely since they have threads .
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      Musk bought it to cancel the woke culture but got cancelled instead, lol. FWIW it's not really fair that everyone interesting left just because they didn't like Musk which turned twitter into boring place, basically self reinforcing cycle.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Enterprise value != equity value. This is finance 101 and a bit ridiculous for the deputy editor of The Verge to be fucking up. According to Fidelity, X’s equity is worth ~$10bn. X also has $13bn of debt on which $2bn of losses have been reserved [1]. That implies an enterprise value around $20bn. That Fidelity gives its X stake a positive value implies it doesn’t believe Twitter will have to play by the standard rulebook when it defaults. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-lenders-expect-to-lose-2-billion-on-twitter-debt-report-2023-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-lenders-expect-to...

14 points by arromatic 2y ago

1. Is creating a proper twitter alternative that difficult ? What is google , msft and maybe companies in entire eu (and us) doing ? 2. Is there a chance twitter will be sold ? or a get a government bail out . Twitter's reach is too valuable to let it go bankrupt/ crash .

downrightmike 2y ago
Its now worth less than the worse case scenario that the banks believed
- arromatic 2y ago
  That 13b bank loan alone could build another twitter with more revenue .
not_your_vase 2y ago
The problem is not technical. The main task is convincing the masses to use it. When there was only 1 player (twitter), it was a trivial thing. When the market is fractured, it gets more exciting.
- arromatic 2y ago
  Exciting assuming the future apps or users are too excited to choose alternative ? I don't really think there are any proper alternative on the market even after a year for users to move . Bluesky ? no algo , Threads ? no politics and meta , t2/pebble ? bankrupt .
  - talldayo 2y ago
    I'm just going to address the elephant in the room: Twitter, before Elon's takeover, was a crypto-obsessed political echo chamber. You cannot get an "alternative" to it because people refuse to acknowledge that Twitter was never all that great in the first place. You can never go home, as they say, and that applies to old versions of social media just as well. You will never, ever have an alternative where all your friends and role-models post on the same network. It just doesn't happen, ever. Not with Twitter, and not with a Twitter alternative - your expectations aren't realistic, and so you're bound to be disappointed until your outlook changes. If you're willing to adjust your expectations and use a smaller network, you can still enjoy social media. You just have to stop treating it as an attention-stealing exercise where you're in competition with your peers to get noticed by "the world". Platforms like Mastodon are great, as long as you don't rely on likes and reposts for dopamine.
    - arromatic 2y ago
      If you are a hobbyist writing blogs for fun and not spending hours doing seo for google old twitter was the only way your post / site could be delivered to your intended audience . You wrote a post about the latest python update ? Twitter will deliver it to python liking cluster . Something no other social media does nor do search engines like google where only limited sites are shown .
      - talldayo 2y ago
        You vastly overestimate how many people actually use Twitter. The "python liking cluster" does not uniformly hang out on Twitter - maybe like less than ~3% of them probably still use the site. Also, X will happily downrank your content if it isn't controversial enough to be viral. After all, your python-likers aren't reading on a chronological timeline. They're being fed an algorithm of doomscrolling - finding your posts on the site is little more than a beneficial mistake. You can continue to cling to Twitter until the corpse is cold and they've replaced the blue branding with black, if you wanted. People are both stockholm-syndromed to the app in an unhealthy way and addicted to attention-seeking in ways that X knowingly exploits for ad revenue and premium subscription tithes. It will only get worse!
gregjor 2y ago
I think Twitter needs a new CEO/owner, not alternatives. Personally I don't use Twitter/X anymore, it has no value to me, but I understand some people find it valuable. Twitter cannot survive at current scale with any reasonable subscription price. If advertisers come back and it shows enough ads to turn a profit users will get sick of the ads, it will turn into Facebook.
- arromatic 2y ago
  Twitter was doing okay (maybe not) before pre-musk without being another facebook . New owner is actually the best option in my opinion too , but I don't think anyone is willing to buy it for 44b .
- timeon 2y ago
  > Twitter cannot survive at current scale with any reasonable subscription price. Twitter was not bought to make money. Twitter is expenditure for narrative control.
  - xenospn 2y ago
    That is correct. Valuation is irrelevant.
  - gregjor 2y ago
    We’ll see how long Twitter can bleed out. Even Musk can’t afford it forever.
    - arromatic 2y ago
      My bet is on bail-out or resell to msft . Google is possible which would be nice assuming same treatment as yt but meta is unlikely since they have threads .
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    Musk bought it to cancel the woke culture but got cancelled instead, lol. FWIW it's not really fair that everyone interesting left just because they didn't like Musk which turned twitter into boring place, basically self reinforcing cycle.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

Enterprise value != equity value. This is finance 101 and a bit ridiculous for the deputy editor of The Verge to be fucking up. According to Fidelity, X’s equity is worth ~$10bn. X also has $13bn of debt on which $2bn of losses have been reserved [1]. That implies an enterprise value around $20bn. That Fidelity gives its X stake a positive value implies it doesn’t believe Twitter will have to play by the standard rulebook when it defaults. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-lenders-expect-to-lose-2-billion-on-twitter-debt-report-2023-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-lenders-expect-to...