The acquisition of Twitter is expected to be completed tomorrow. Please allow it to close tomorrow. Financial journalists have a lot to say about this. In the peanut gallery, I would like to talk about Musk.
He must be a genius because he is the richest man on Earth. The most important thing to Musk is his reputation.
Making money is not something that is done by the micro-messaging service.
It is not a very good purchase. A general partner at Manhattan Venture Partners said that no one thinks the company should be valued at $44 billion. She and others tried to back out of the deal. Musk said in the earnings call that he and other investors are overpaying for the social networking site.
Last year, the social network made only $5 billion in revenue, making it a very poor performer. It wasn't profitable. It has an outsized reach due to the active use of people such as Musk, who use the platform to connect with their fans, investors, and others. Politicians and journalists are heavy users of the social networking site. Making money is not something that is done by the micro-messaging service.
According to reports, Musk told investors that he would double the revenue of the company. He told them that he would cut 75 percent of his staff. The numbers feel a lot like AOL-Time Warner, where executives cooked up $1 billion in savings and said the merged company would do $40 billion in revenue, but they didn't work out. It is possible that that is possible. He thinks so and his job is to be good at money.
If Botha is right, and Musk is right, then the Everything App could be created. He gets richer, but it doesn't affect his reputation. You feel me, dude landed a rocket on a barge. The status quo is that the student who comes in first on the math test comes in first again.
The student who comes in first on every math test is noteworthy.
The heavy users of the platform are ghosting it. Half of the revenue of the company is generated by those users. This isn't Musk's fault, but it's his problem now.
The fact that its users hate each other has never been able to be dealt with by the company.
The reputation of Musk is worth a lot. The Musk aura has helped protect both companies. Musk has not used social media for marketing as much as other CEOs. He has cultivated a Very Online fan base between his social media accounts. There is a parallel media community dedicated to positive news about Musk.
Fans of Musk say that he gives them hope. He talked about the kind of future that science fiction promised. Buying a social media platform decreases ambition. The guy who promised to put people on Mars is going to deal with moderation issues on a website that less than one in five Americans use.
It doesn't get better. The expectations of speech and moderation may be difficult to handle under Musk. The most notable thing Musk has said is that he plans for less content moderation. Garbage Day's Ryan Broderick has said that even users of conservative social media want moderation.
A bigger shift is happening in online communities. The fact that its users hate each other has never been able to be dealt with by the company. We call it thehellsite. Some social media ventures such as TikTok and BeReal allow people to put up boundaries, but not on the social networking site.
A car or rocket has simpler goals than a community. Metal doesn't talk about active mass shooting, child sexual abuse material, hate speech, or hentai.
Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge, photo by Christian Marquardt / Getty Images
Musk fans can imagine how he will handle moderation and they will do what they want. Reality bites, so Gen Xers should know. Moderates are messy, difficult, and miserable. Bad choices are immediately apparent to users and can lead to a fight.
Content moderation is a problem for bigger companies and it isn't limited toTwitter. TikTok limits the reach of videos made by people who are likely to get harassed, such as creators with disabilities. It also lost a piece of its moderation policy because of the way it has treated the contractors who do the dirty work of removing the most horrible videos. At times, the text snippets told users that the man was killed by a dog. The Facebook-owned app did a poor job of removing human traffickers. There is no mention of Amazon selling suicide kits.
Hate speech and politics are both more difficult and prone to user blowback. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent by Musk on politicians. A moderation choice could be difficult. Musk has a large revenge surface because of the number of companies he has. There are a lot of things to worry about, but this isn't one of them.
Does Musk's reputation suffer if the share price plummets?
The least important group in the acquisition is users. The banks got saddled with debt because they couldn't sell it as usual because of Musk's shenanigans. The debt will be sold by Musk once the deal closes, according to the report. William Cohan notes that banks holding debt too long is riskier for Musk. There are governments that have a lot of feelings about social media and are able to use it to interfere with Musk's businesses.
Musk's reputation has been boosted byTesla, which Musk pulled from the jaws of financial ruin more than once. People who aren't environmentalists are getting excited about the cars because ofTesla's EV. He was rewarded with a share price that went up and made him the richest man in the world. Does Musk's reputation suffer if the share price plummets?
Dealing with Twitter's problems is not like a traumatic brain injury, it's happening at a terrible time, and it's not so bad as a headaches. I am reliably informed by the football watchers on staff that Chevy is spending big on ads about its electric vehicles; during Musk's time hosting SNL it felt like every EV maker on Earth advertised against him.
I don't think it's a case of Chevy dethronesTesla on EV It is easier to get your car fixed by a big auto manufacturer. With the expansion of the charging networks being funded by the Biden administration, I am not sure how long that lead will last. There is a chance of dealer sales of new cars. The used car market can be difficult forTesla owners. At a time when Musk is taking on a brand-new very noisy distraction, these problems need sustained attention.
Musk has become more isolated as his star has grown.
In the first two months of this year, Musk has sold more than 15 billion of his shares in his company. Musk is different from the next crop of tech founders because he doesn't have founder control of the company. It's possible that he's vulnerable to activist investors if the company continues to suffer.
It might be time to talk about Musk's outsized persona. It used to be that most people knew that he was the inspiration for Tony Stark in the movies. Musk was allowed to speak to the faithful directly on the social media platform. He is more accessible to people who dislike him or are not interested in hearing about him.
Musk has become more isolated as his star has risen. He said in a March interview that it was hard to buy a coffee at the corner store because of his popularity. It is difficult to go to the store or walk down the street now. I can't go to a restaurant. In addition to being a place where he floats his weird ideas, he also uses it as a place for socializing. He replies to randos. Musk is going to lose the trust of users if the changes are made.
We won't be able to tell how people feel about it just by looking at its stock price. It's probably fine if people complain about the social networking site on the internet. There is no way thatTesla won't be. Musk's wealth will also be affected if it fails. Will he still be considered a genius if he isn't so rich?
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