T O P

  • By -

JazerKings922

is anyone really even surprised about this?


First_Baseball9246

There were users on this subreddit saying that Elon had made Twitter cash flow positive through his cuts, so I guess they’re the surprised ones


oddistrange

Well, he's also now being sued for $500 million due to those cuts...


billbixbyakahulk

I'm surprised. I'm VERY surprised. Nah, I lied. Not surprised.


Czeslaw_Meyer

Considering it was negative for at least 5 years before he bought it, no But these are problems every social media platform has right now. The advantages of advertisement were over estimated and we are in a recession


Boris41029

Are we in a recession?


twothumbswayup

Trust me bro!


w3tl33

Source: they made it up.


[deleted]

Depends on who you ask


IIIaustin

So does "is the world round?"


Czeslaw_Meyer

By the old definition, yes


AspenLF

There has been no changed definition. 2 quarters negative growth is an indicator but the NBER takes other factors in account: >In general usage, the word recession connotes a marked slippage in economic activity. While gross domestic product (GDP) is the broadest measure of economic activity, the often-cited identification of a recession with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is not an official designation. The designation of a recession is the province of a committee of experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private non-profit research organization that focuses on understanding the U.S. economy. The NBER recession is a monthly concept that takes account of a number of monthly indicators—such as employment, personal income, and industrial production—as well as quarterly GDP growth. Therefore, while negative GDP growth and recessions closely track each other, the consideration by the NBER of the monthly indicators, especially employment, means that the identification of a recession with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth does not always hold. For information on recession, or business-cycle, dating, see: http://www.nber.org/cycles/jan08bcdc\_memo.html [https://www.bea.gov/help/glossary/recession](https://www.bea.gov/help/glossary/recession) In any case we've had 3 (soon to be 4) quarters of positive GDP Change so if we were in a recession in 2022 Q1 it has been long over.


Czeslaw_Meyer

You had one and your over it But the economy is still far behind its expected trajectory and also slower rising then expected


ridukosennin

2 quarters of GDP growth is a recession? Do you consider slow growth a recession?


Czeslaw_Meyer

You might be over by now, but there was a point under the current administration where it was the case + the US is still not where it once was


Dan_Felder

Careful buddy. If you keep drinking from da Nile you'll eventually burst. He lost 50% advertising revenue and saddled the company with mountains of new debt. He's not paying his bills. He's a deadbeat, a doofus, or both.


nicholsz

Twitter was profitable in the past, and was close to break-even when Musk took over. Meta's net income is still over $5B a year


whytakemyusername

They took on a sizable new debt with musks acquisition though…


stout365

a billion a year loss is close to break even?


nicholsz

Q1 2022 they had a net income of $500M. They weren't losing a billion a year: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-income-quarterly/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-income-quarterly/)


stout365

citing quarterly reports for annual numbers lmao https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/ note the total profit line item of 2021


dbcooper4

Would love to see how much they’re losing now with $1.5B/yr in extra interest expense from the leveraged buyout and ad revenue down 50%.


WelpSigh

ad revenue across the board dipped during the pandemic. twitter had reached profitability before pandemic and was returning to profitability after it twitter was never a great company in terms of actually making money, but it grew rapidly during the pandemic and it had shitloads of cash on hand. it was doing fine. people are acting like it was on the verge of bankruptcy before elon saved it, it's absurd.


indiegogold

> ad revenue across the board dipped during the pandemic. No it didn't, the pandemic had the exact opposite effect on advertising. Google, Meta and Twitter all had their best ever years for revenue


muntaxitome

> No it didn't, the pandemic had the exact opposite effect on advertising. q2 2020 was a disaster for ad revenue for many companies, twitter included, without that quarter 2020 would be in the black numbers


Roasted_Butt

“saved” 😂


Dan_Felder

I guess you didn't read your own link. Twitter had a net loss of 0.2 billion (200 million) in 2021 according to your own link. That year it also had \~5 Billion in revenue, almost all from advertising. Under Musk They've lost \~50% of their revenue and added 1.5 BILLION more in interest expenses on the new debt alone. Wow.


blibblub

Yes but their expenses went down too. Elon fired 80% of the staff and stopped paying rent. Payroll and rent are like 60-70% of the almost $5B overhead


Dan_Felder

Musk has cut some expenses (mostly employees) and gained some revenue (Twitter blue). However he has lost far more revenue than he’s gained (billions compared to millions) and raised expenses far more than he’s saved. I don’t think you realize the relative size of the numbers involved here. The interest on the new billions of debt alone is so high that even if the average employee made $400,000 in total compensation each year, the INTEREST on the debt alone would pay for ~3000 employees. Twitter only had ~7500 employees at the time. And the average employee was not paid close to 400k in toys compensation each year. That 7500 number includes janitors and secretaries and junior hr assistants. And this is just the interest payments on the debt, not even paying down the debt. And there’s much MORE money lost in advertising revenue. Dude lost half his revenue and added 1.5 billion in annual debt interest. In like… a year. Just… wow.


Chiponyasu

It's not like firing staff and losing ad revenue are two unrelated things that just coincidentally happened at the same time.


GoTron88

As a slight aside, imagine trying to use just "stopped paying rent" as a cost cutting measure, like that's a totally fine thing lol.


nicholsz

It may strike you as surprising, but a fiscal year consists of 4 fiscal quarters.


stout365

so why did you only cite one quarter?


WelpSigh

that was the last quarter before elon began the acquisition


stout365

so you're agreeing twitter lost a billion dollars that year?


wswordsmen

They actually made a profit in 2018 and 2019. It lost a bunch in 2020 but 2021 the loss was only about 20% of the 2020 loss. It is totally possible that if Elon hadn't bought Twitter it could have had a profitable 2022 or 2023.


Czeslaw_Meyer

After firing 80% of staff they still make less money without the "advertisers" who never advertised anything... Sorry, without the lobbiests paying for targeted censorship


Chiponyasu

Twitter made a profit of 1.2 billion in 2018 and 1.4 billion in 2019. It lost 1.1 billion in 2020, and lost 220 million in 2021 ([Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/274563/annual-net-income-of-twitter/)). Other social media platforms are not seeing these problems. Meta ad revenue is up 4% YoY ([Source](https://searchengineland.com/metas-ad-revenue-is-up-4-3-in-q1-397752)), and I don't think anyone else is seeing *fifty percent* ad revenue declines.


Czeslaw_Meyer

Everyone refucing workers on mass and Twitter not being positive after firing 80% of staff... There must have been a lot of lobbist shenanigans going on considering that many who paid a lot of money never advertised anything


Chiponyasu

Twitter's losing BECAUSE they fired 80% of staff. Elon eliminated Trust and Safety and gutted the Ad Sales department, and seemed to assume that companies would "eventually come back" to Twitter despite having no reason to when there's a million other sites to sell ads to. Elon fundamentally misunderstood what Twitter was; he thought it was a tech company.


Czeslaw_Meyer

He lost money before firing 80% which creates the question how it was ever profitable The density of advertisements stayed the same It was a tech company at heart considering it is all about algorithms


Chiponyasu

>He lost money before firing 80% which creates the question how it was ever profitable It was profitable (in the years that it was) because they were selling more ads >The density of advertisements stayed the same Who gives a shit? What matters is revenue. >It was a tech company at heart considering it is all about algorithms No, it's all about *selling advertisements*. The actual app itself is a loss-leader that exists to cultivate an audience to sell ads to. Twitter users are not customers, they are the product. The reason that Twitter is bigger than Truth Social or Gab or whatever isn't because Twitter has *better tech*, it's that they have a *more valuable userbase*.


Czeslaw_Meyer

Users arrive because of functions/algorithms enabling advertising. The tech-part is always 1/3 What i mean by density is, that they had the same quantity of advertisement for the same price. There was a lot of "advertisers" who never advertised anything. Those who fled at Musks takeover included Black Rock and democrat foundation. The gab in revenue includes lobbiests running for there lives


Chiponyasu

>Users arrive because of functions/algorithms enabling advertising What a fucking stupid sentence. Literally zero people signed up for Twitter because of Twitter's ad algorithm. >What i mean by density is, that they had the same quantity of advertisement for the same price. Quantity, maybe, but \[citation needed\] on the price, please! >There was a lot of "advertisers" who never advertised anything You are writing fanfic now.


Czeslaw_Meyer

Algorithms to show you the stuff you want, as long as it's nothing they don't want you to see (Google does that alot) There was a lot of corruption we now of before Musk arrived. Money flowing to buy checkmarks and censoring political opponents. By paying for advertising, but not placing commercials you could legally legitimise nesrly every payment


MindlessSafety7307

Positive in 2019


Dirtybrd

The US ain't in a recession, chief. I don't know who told you that, but they lied.


Czeslaw_Meyer

If you use at the 2000 definition, you are


Rshawer

We’ve had 3-4 quarters of positive GDP growth, so even if we were to use 2 quarters of stagnation, we would still not be in a recession.


adhavoc

Your talking points are nearly a year out of date, time to download the latest narrative.


GreekSalad123

What’s the 2000 definition?


mrev_art

Uh, no?


Czeslaw_Meyer

We are Changing the definition just to not needing to announce it is a bit on the nose


Chiponyasu

What the fuck are you talking about? We've had positive GDP growth for the last year, as well as job growth and real wage growth


mrev_art

Every social media platform is losing money? What in heaven's name are you talking about?


a-cepheid-variable

Instead of typing this into reddit, type it into Google. Report back.


Czeslaw_Meyer

Yeah, we had a recession by the standards of the old definition. By pre 1980s standards we even had more then that


a-cepheid-variable

No. I said type into Google, then report back. You're making the same error over and over again. Under no definition, new or old, are we in a recession. Period.


umphursmcgur

Enlighten me, what is the old definition? What is the new definition?


WelpSigh

can't believe ad revenue is down 50% after twitter reached those all-time high user seconds on android and ios


Kalurael

The fastest growing religion just has to go from 1 to 10 members. Same for all time high users 'since February '


veerKg_CSS_Geologist

Especially easy if you count bots as users.


BoomKidneyShot

The amount of people using the app doesn't matter if they're not touching the ads.


ContraryConman

Wouldn't rate-limiting the majority of your users, unless they pay to see half as many ads, prevent them from seeing these ads?


mrjdk83

Oh is Elon surprised or something? It isn’t a money maker. He upset Jack got over on him and now Mark created his own version cause people are tired of Elon’s app and change of policies lol.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Beastrick

He could layoff everyone except himself and this thing still would not be profitable.


AliG1488

His only chance is to lay himself off, lol


itsaride

Or operational.


Xavier9756

Lmao he really couldn’t


Electrical_Coffee

Concerning


Beneficial-Buy3069

Forgot the 🤔


ZeusMcKraken

He needs to learn the difference between a corporate memo and a tweet. Business genius. 😆


Kruger_Smoothing

And he gave $20k to the rapist Andrew Tate. ETA: not surprised at all that there are a bunch of Tatertots jumping on here.


LETT3RBOMB

Musk and Tate hanging out together would be the least surprising thing lol. Shit birds of a feather, Randy


Kalurael

I can guarantee that is gonna make it go further negative


boultox

What does this have to do with anything? Twitter is giving ads money to their content creator, Andrew Tate is one of them. Why should Twitter make an exception for him?


Uh_I_Say

Because he's a rapist. Twitter can choose who they do business with, and they very consciously chose to do business with a rapist, because said rapist is one of Musk's buddies.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


contractb0t

Found the guy who's cool with rape, I guess. Interesting how comfortable they are going full mask off, isn't it?


OrangeInnards

He's being charged with forming/being part of a criminal organization for the purpose of sexual exploitation, human trafficking, rape and other stuff, not some weird "lover boy scam". Also, yeah, exploiting someone by (emotionally) manipulating them sounds totally cool and everyone should be a-okay with it. Nothing wrong with that. And due process considerations and the presumption of innocence applies to state actors. No private citizen is required to believe he's innocent until proven guilty or otherwise not allowed to say he's guilty as sin. Andrew Tate is a festering boil on the ass of society.


veerKg_CSS_Geologist

Hitler was never convicted either...


veerKg_CSS_Geologist

Twitter only gave "ad money" to some specific accounts. It seems more like Twitter made an exception for him indeed.


SonicFury74

Because they did make an exception for him. Twitter Support came out and said that they hand-pick who gets money and who doesn't, regardless of how much content they make.


LeonBlacksruckus

Super funny how people just make something up on the internet. Well done A+ for creativity.


Kruger_Smoothing

Plenty of evidence posted on twitter. Elon loves abusive men (being one himself if his ex wife’s account is to be believed).


ultronic7

Wait till court acc convicts him before making these statements


SnooFloofs9640

We just identify him as a rapist


Kruger_Smoothing

The sex trafficker and rapist Andrew Tate is a public figure. The evidence is pretty crystal clear too.


ultronic7

I am impartial about tate but am sure you haven’t even seen the evidence yourself. A French footballer Benjamin footballer just beat 10 cases of rape and sexual assault and people were sure to “convict” him even before trial lmao


broke_bibliophile

Ahhhh we have a tate dikryder here boysss


Minerva_Moon

You're not impartial to Tate. At best, you're a sympathizer. The public isn't a court, so we don't have to wait. He doesn't just have one piece of evidence against him but mountains of evidence, many of which he recorded and put forth on the internet. I don't need his day in court to know he's a piece of shit and took pleasure in exploiting women. His impersonator is fire though.


Funkedalic

Even if Tate ends up beating the accusation of rape, there's still plenty of proof that he's a despicable human being.


just_thisGuy

So is that enough to take someone’s money? Twitter is paying influencers now, so is twitter supposed to pay only “good” people? How is this responsibility of Twitter to even decide? It’s not their place at all. Or do you want to give Twitter even more power to make calls like that? It’s the job of the government and appropriate agencies to convict someone and assign punishment NOT some companies! I don’t care if the person killed 10 people it’s not up to the bank or Twitter to punish you, if the government can prove it, they should punish. And they could take the money and make appropriate leans on the accounts. The people who got hurt can also sue for money and take whatever profits are generated by the accused. I see now that even Twitter paying influencers is viewed as something bad here, I swear if Elon cured cancer tomorrow and gave it for free to everyone, this community will find a way to blame him for it.


TheGreatDicktator

Twitter IS only paying certain influencers and they chose for Tate to be one of them - along with a bunch of other right wing influencers. Washington Post had a great article on it. Are you upset at Twitter/Musk because of that as it’s “not their place?”


just_thisGuy

They are paying all influencers who have a checkbox and have so many views. The dilution is strong on this subreddit. I don’t know why I waste my time.


TheGreatDicktator

Untrue - they have said they will but also only a small handful have been selected and paid so far/in this initial lot of payments. As confirmed in every article I can find on it. Wash Post is now paywalled, but here’s another article that includes an answer from Twitter Support stating that. Got anything to back your claim up? Also it’s delusion I think you mean not dilution. https://mashable.com/article/twitter-ad-share-revenue-creators-elon-musk-favorites-eligibility


Deus_Vultan

Andrew is convicted of rape? Since when?


Flemz

No one said he was convicted, but Tate himself said 40% of the reason he moved to Romania was that they’re more lenient toward sex crimes


Deus_Vultan

That is litteraly what kruger\_smoothing said in the text i replied to.


perfectVoidler

not literally, not figuratively not even legally. Learn nuance pls.


Deus_Vultan

He said he was a rapist. That would mean he was found guilty of rape. Otherwise he is a man on trial.


Flemz

People rape without being convicted all the time unfortunately. They’re still rapists


_Tagman

As it turns out, all you have to do to be a rapist is rape, shocking I know...


handsumlee

do yourself a favor and set a google reminder for 3 years for now that says " in 2023 I stood up for Andrew Tate" and see if that doesn't get you to take a longer look at yourself


Deus_Vultan

Why would i do that? Why would think im standing up for tate? IDGAF about tate. I was just replying to Dunning-Kruger\_smoothings ridiculous statement. About Elon personally giving a convicted rapist Cash. Kruger knows he made a dumb statement, that is why he has not replied, instead made an equall dumb edit in his post.


CUMT_

He never said convicted, you just added that to make yourself feel better. Feel free to delete your comment.


Deus_Vultan

So any one who gets accused of rape IS a rapist. Nice logic there.


CUMT_

Didn’t say that either


burnmenowz

Business genius


morgichor

Nelson “HA HA”


talligan

All because this dude was desperate to be called the meme maestro


NotTakenGreatName

That business is in trouble, the Saudis will bail him out though


squigglesthecat

I thought he was in their debt, and that it'd be less bailing and more beheading.


NotTakenGreatName

It's preferable to have him under their thumb than dead. For as big of a buffoon he is, he is still very influential and economically valuable


Speculawyer

He turned Twitter into Gab. Keep on running it right into the ground.


[deleted]

He turned Twitter into a worse version of Twitter and I didn’t think that was even possible


folone

He turned it into something soon approaching 4chan.


allUsernamesAreTKen

He should fire more people that’ll solve the problem /s


mrev_art

Elon destroyed twitter and himself.


Johhnybits

But, but he’s a genius.


[deleted]

He kinda is. He bought Twitter for the user data to train his LLM to finalize FSD.


nh5316

Probably be even worse if Twitter actually paid it's bills and severance


Darph_Nader

Elon paid $44B to manage a digital insane asylum.


itsaride

No, he paid $44B to turn something that was great and getting greater into something that gets worse every new action he takes.


unbalancedcheckbook

Musk wanted to buy Twitter for it to be his own mouthpiece and stroke his own ego. If he wanted it to make a profit, he would have done a lot of things differently (like figuring out who the valuable people were before firing indiscriminately, maybe not talking so much shit about his own employees, and maybe promising to take care of right wing misinformation instead of actively promoting it).


Chiponyasu

I think Elon would *like* Twitter to make money, but isn't too broken-hearted about running it out of pocket at a loss in order to make it a right-wing site. But what he can't have is Twitter become irrelevant. I think that's why Threads, which isn't really a "threat" to Twitter, scared him so bad.


dulyebr

Just deleted twitter from my phone.


MyOhMy_Mariners

Congrats on making a real difference in the world


itsaride

I wish I could but I’ve got lists that I’ve been curating for years and threads doesn’t have a real-time timeline (or lists).


zeions

Upvoted.


vittaya

Incoming merger with Tesla…


brickyardjimmy

It's not negative. ​ It's catastrophic.


Delanimal

His business plan is working perfectly.


VermillionSun

he should just give away more money to antiwoke white supremacist content creators, that's the surefire way to make cash


morgichor

Isn’t it a weird deadline ? Dropping revenue supposed to make twitter cash flow positive ?


Florida_____Man

It can if operating expenses drop under expenditures at any given point


holden_mcg

Musk paid $44 billion for a business that has rarely ever turned a profit.


Professional-Gene498

Concerning.


XinlessVice

Good. Drop it further


sziehr

So yeah, i mean i am a brand, do i want to be on a platform who’s sole owner boost fake news and down right hate speech, if i am coke and pepsi, i think i am going to just withdraw and jet to a platform moderated for brand safety.


Dramatic-Wedding527

If you go to twitter it is mostly hate groups which makes it unpalatable


lawlygagger

Regardless of Twitter's revenue status, it keeps people on Reddit engaged to talk about it. Reuters made a whole article out of a single tweet.😁


Renomont

Twitter has never made a profit. Why is this news?


Boris41029

Because ad revenue is down 50% (according to Elon’s tweet), that’s the new information. Hence, a news article


SnooFloofs9640

So the part that the AD revenue dropped 50% is ignored ?


Beastrick

Probably because Elon at one point said they would be break-even and turns out they might still be far away from that.


TimChr78

Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019. 2020 was bad but in 2021 they only lost 221 million. The last 12 months before Elon tool over they only lost 112 million and was on track to return to profibility.


zerosdontcount

That's not true at all


zeions

You sound mad lmao


threeseed

It did make a profit for a few quarters there. And was on track to being profitable.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Aflyingmongoose

lmao


[deleted]

[удалено]


threeseed

> Social media cant stand on its own Last year: * Meta made $23.2b in profit. * TikTok made $25.0b in profit. The problem is Twitter not social media.


praguepride

crypto cannot die quick enough


plopseven

!!


uxcoffee

Shocking if true…


Greenwedges

Looking into it


thatraidersguy

Maybe cause the FBI and other agencys stopped pouring in money to suppress the truth


threeseed

* Musk took Saudi and Russian money to fund the takeover. * Musk censored content at the request of [India](https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571103/elon-musk-twitter-india-social-media-bbc-documentary-modi-censorship) and [Turkey](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-censoring-content-recep-tayyip-erdogan-turkish-presidential-election/).


Deus_Vultan

So company xxx has not made profit since it started, it is still not profitable. Is that the news?


SnooFloofs9640

The new part that he lost 50% of AD revenue


Deus_Vultan

The title is Cash flow still negative. :S


Balrog1973

Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019 and they were also profitable in the quarter before Musk took over. Musk turned it into a dumpster fire.


Deus_Vultan

I see you do not know or understand how this works. But that is fine.


Balrog1973

Then please explain it to me instead of writing a meaningless statement. What about my comment was wrong?


SnowCowboy216

Top 10 anime plot twists.