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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Man...
I was pretty bummed when I heard that Twitter was going to die. There are some cool moments in history that happened on Twitter. It was a hell of a ride, but the writing was on the wall well before Elon bought it. It was time to go.
But not like this.
It deserved a good death. Not to have it's corpse raped on full display over and over.
A lot of very talented people committed so much time and energy to this. When it launched, it was a novel idea and they really forged some roads in our understanding of how we communicate and receive information.
It was clear at the end that it would never produce the kind of ROI on advertising to make investors happy, and that Nazis had clearly taken over the platform and used it to bastardize journalism further. It was time to go to pasture.
But not like this.
Hopefully its mutilated, humiliated and desiccated corpse will feed the growth of the federated web.
I hope you find peace, sweet prince.
Twitter was profitable before Musk took over.
The purchase itself saddled Twitter with $13 billion in debt. Musk paid $26bn, other investors (including the Saudi prince) together paid $5bn, and the remaining $13bn was a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on their behalf.
The new owners only paid tax on the $31bn they paid, not the $44bn that was paid to shareholders. (Here's something I'm not sure about: Musk was one of the largest shareholders. Is the $44bn the total value of all shares - does that include Musk's shares? Did he basically buy shares from himself?)
The interest on that $13bn was comparible to Twitter's revenue, before Musk started fucking around. Twitter could not afford that debt.
The buyout itself was what killed Twitter. Everything since then has been nothing but a clown show to distract from the fact that was the original intention.
I'm not saying it wasn't profitable. It's a hell of an achievement that it was.
Just that they took on a lot of investment capital and it wasn't the kind of return that investors were expecting.
Ultimately, the efficacy of social media advertising on the whole is in the decline. The number and types of companies that used to advertise and run their business on Facebook is so different today than it was five years ago, and business are seeing far less return for their budget.
Twitter was riding a knife's edge (particularly during COVID) and would have to really scramble to stay in the red in the future.
Did you mean stay in the black?