Elon Bought Twitter- X GON GIVE IT TO YA

[Uncle]

If Twitter collapses after only two weeks of a new CEO, I don't care who that CEO is, that business has had some serious problems for a long time.

earlier it was stated that twitter performed poorly in their yearly ad sales conference, which happened just a few weeks after musk offered to buy the platform

this person claims that a coalition specifically aimed at stopping the deal interfered with advertisers to poison the well, though looking at the dates his timeline seems a little off

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1588696157794242560.html

but an insane conspiracy-minded person could argue that twitter sabotaged their potential ad revenue for the upcoming year and set musk up to fail 

[who is ted danson?]

filler come get yo girl

https://twitter.com/animeweedfart69/status/1591121864172396546

[james]

Reply all chaos is classic gold

https://mobile.twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1591152301817102336

[Potato]

The more we see behind the veil of Twatter operationally, the easier it is to see how it's been such a basket case for so long. These people Musk inherited are just incompetent. Combine that with his idiocy and it's just prime car crash material.
 

[benjipwns]

If Twitter collapses after only two weeks of a new CEO, I don't care who that CEO is, that business has had some serious problems for a long time.

Nope, the verified users (so not allowed to post misinformation) have assured me that Musk has ruined Twitter's massive financial success in just a week and it probably won't make it to Thanksgiving let alone the new year now because of Musk's FREEZE PEACH FOR $8 stupidity. We're just lucky he was able to ruin the company completely before he could destroy democracy like he nearly did on Tuesday and definitely would have if Twitter made it to 2024. If Musk wasn't the stupidest man on the planet he would have lulled everyone into a false sense of security while cashing the fat Twitter checks so he could unban Trump for 2024 and bring in the fascism he desires. Thankfully, the powerful conspiracy that operates all of society in pursuit of a singular goal is once again full of morons who can't walk and chew gum at the same time let alone run the most essential and profitable corporation on the planet as well as the average clickbait journalist or politically obsessed YouTuber who gives all their unparalleled business advice for free to the public constantly.

[Madrun Badrun]

If Twitter collapses after only two weeks of a new CEO, I don't care who that CEO is, that business has had some serious problems for a long time.

Yes but it's akin to someone with cancer trying to cure it with black salve instead of doing chemo;  they still have cancer but now they have also burnt their tits off (and are still telling people that chemo is poison, probably over twitter).  The mass firings just massively accelerated and exacerbated issues.  Like it's not just a new CEO, it's a new CEO and half the workers and half the workers trying to do all the old work plus all the new ideas of the new boss.  This idea also relies on the misconception that Twitter, being a tech company, was probably just a bunch of programmers whose daily job wasn't critical to daily operations, so big cuts shouldn't result in disaster in just a few weeks.  Also, those programmers actually are critical to daily operations if you are implementing on-the-fly platform changes at the whim of the new boss.  A better analogy would be that Musk tried to put out a fire with gasoline.  Yes, being on fire is a problem, but how it got serious really depends on the size of the original fire and the amount of gasoline given, and Musk dumped the whole can. 

[benjipwns]

That assumes that the work of half those workers is work that needs to be done, I have yet to see evidence of that being the case. Clearing out useless management and bureaucrats wasting money isn't the same thing as getting rid of essential employees.

To be fair, I'm also going to be skeptical of a bunch of anonymous sources who are telling everyone the exact narrative they want to hear without any details.

[Coax]

If Twitter collapses after only two weeks of a new CEO, I don't care who that CEO is, that business has had some serious problems for a long time.

One of their devs recently said they were "near death" right before the 2016 elections it was that bad. The uptick in traffic stirred over Trump saved them, ironically.

[benjipwns]

This is a company that has been losing millions of dollars a day for how long yet somehow the burden has been completely shifted.

[Madrun Badrun]

I know this is the thread, or at least the latest thread iteration, for terminally online people to point at others and go 'look at those terminally online people', so excuse me if I'm doing this wrong, but you don't consider the state of Twitter before and after the firings to be that evidence?  It feels a bit contrarian to see what is happening and go, everyone is saying this is a disaster, but excuse me if I don't believe a bunch of blue-hairs.  Getting rid of flabby middle management in the middle of a recession is just standard business practice.  You can't cut people and make big structural changes while also making big changes to the product.  A janitor is an essential employee when someone is shitting on the floor.       

An alternative answer to keep with the thread:  LOL ya, Twitter said the moderators were useless, but now they are all concerned that the people doing moderation might have been let go, look at those hypocrites.   

[benjipwns]

I know this is the thread, or at least the latest thread iteration, for terminally online people to point at others and go 'look at those terminally online people', so excuse me if I'm doing this wrong, but you don't consider the state of Twitter before and after the firings to be that evidence?  It feels a bit contrarian to see what is happening and go, everyone is saying this is a disaster, but excuse me if I don't believe a bunch of blue-hairs.  Getting rid of flabby middle management in the middle of a recession is just standard business practice.  You can't cut people and make big structural changes while also making big changes to the product.  A janitor is an essential employee when someone is shitting on the floor.   

The state of Twitter before: losing millions of dollars a day, never really profitable, no clear plan of monetization ever found.

The state of Twitter after: half as many employees, nothing else has changed yet.

[Nintex]

I'm sure some good people got caught in the group that was fired. It is inevitable with such poor numbers.

But if you take a step back it was clear that Twitter was a nuthouse.
The fact that they had UN Human Rights Advocates doing 'Important Work' for Ethiopia(?) on their payroll really screams that they were mostly just activists.
I wonder how many diversity officers, inclusivity managers, VP's of safe spaces and Corporate Policy Officers they actually had running around, a whole damn lot it seems.
A company like Microsoft can afford to keep a useless bunch around up to a certain point for appearances and sometimes they even make something like Kinect but Twitter which makes no money should focus on the fundamentals like Elon is doing.

Twitter had a terrible business model, in fact all sorts of paid services appeared around Twitter to do things like curb follower lists, track users, make longer Tweets etc. .
The UN Human Rights Advocates certainly weren't doing anything to improve the bottom line of the company or the user experience.


Elon doing the fact checking all by himself

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591206480338116608

[Madrun Badrun]

Ya, that's true.  I imagine the numbers work like this.  There were 3,700 people cut.  One of them was an activist UN Human Rights Advocates doing 'Important Work' for Ethiopia (insert starvation joke because it's the 90's) and if there was one of them, then we probably could find one for Chad, Syria, and the rest of them.  Generalizing that, we have 195 activist UN Human Rights Advocates at Twitter, one for each county of course.  And because we know no one does anything at twitter, we know that for every one person doing 'Important Work' for Ethiopia, there will be one doing 'Unimportant Work' for Ethiopia.  Extrapolating that gets us to 390 useless employees who certainly weren't doing anything to improve the bottom line of the company or the user experience.  Now we need to factor in each one of their unique managers who we can assume exist and don't do anything but manage the people doing 'Important and Unimportant Work':  that's 780 people right there.   That's already 20% of the people cut.  An absolute nuthouse.         

[benjipwns]

Blue Checks now reporting the news of themselves making fake accounts:

https://twitter.com/geoffreyfowler/status/1591111320547430400
https://twitter.com/ShiraOvide/status/1591055728319819779

[Tuckers Law]

Ya, that's true.  I imagine the numbers work like this.  There were 3,700 people cut.  One of them was an activist UN Human Rights Advocates doing 'Important Work' for Ethiopia (insert starvation joke because it's the 90's) and if there was one of them, then we probably could find one for Chad, Syria, and the rest of them.  Generalizing that, we have 195 activist UN Human Rights Advocates at Twitter, one for each county of course.  And because we know no one does anything at twitter, we know that for every one person doing 'Important Work' for Ethiopia, there will be one doing 'Unimportant Work' for Ethiopia.  Extrapolating that gets us to 390 useless employees who certainly weren't doing anything to improve the bottom line of the company or the user experience.  Now we need to factor in each one of their unique managers who we can assume exist and don't do anything but manage the people doing 'Important and Unimportant Work':  that's 780 people right there.   That's already 20% of the people cut.  An absolute nuthouse.       

You're probably lowballing the ratio of useless managers to useless employees, really.

[Tasty]

This is a company that has been losing millions of dollars a day for how long yet somehow the burden has been completely shifted.

Elon Musk and David Zaslav: Umm time to stop playing make-believe, let's actually turn a profit now

Twitter, WBD and The Media™:

[benjipwns]

It's weird because I know a good number of these very same people currently bitching often vocally criticize tech (and other) companies going back to investors over and over to prop up chasing growth at all costs in hopes that actual people will pay down the road. But they seem to make an exception for Twitter even as the previous management couldn't seem to explain what the product was actually supposed to ever be. I'm not saying Elon will figure it out but subscriptions seems like the one thing they could conceivably actually sell even if this current iOS-only Twitter Blue that consists of a Blue Check is probably not the ideal.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1590755127312674816

Obligatory:

Dave Troy
@davetroy
Investigative journalist addressing threats to democracy.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1590856556039573505
https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1590884694513491971
https://twitter.com/ArthurJonesJr13/status/1590835792926367745

[close]

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1590871245486112768
https://twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1591154143015866368

[VomKriege]

Oh no, does the conspiracy against Musk knows no bounds ? 😭
https://twitter.com/ReutersAsia/status/1591241936408657921

Damn the activists of checks notes one of the largest advertisement conglomerate worldwide.

[headwalk]

https://twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1590871245486112768
https://twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1591154143015866368

is her mastodon handle "evan greer is on twitter (and pays for a blue checkmark)"?

[Madrun Badrun]

https://twitter.com/B3nSh4p1ro/status/1591492192350384129

[Maiden Voyage]

https://twitter.com/B3nSh4p1ro/status/1591492192350384129

[james]

I didn't have the former CEO of Tmobile asking for a job to Elon on my bingo

[james]

https://mobile.twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1591848844899540992

[Nintex]

You don't need 5500 peeps to run a website.

I'm stunned at the number of employees and contractors they had to be honest.

Microsoft Studios has about ~3000 employees, Nintendo about ~6000.
Twitter had 7500 employees and apparently 5500 contractors.

That's 13 000 employees.
What the fuck were they doing all day.

LinkedIn has more sure, but they do a lot of corporate outreach and have various advertising products within their platform as well as consultants who work directly with larger clients.
Twitter has none of that.

[Pissy F Benny]

Jack Dorsey does seem like the kind of soft touch who'd be easily convinced that bringing in loads of people was needed.

[Nintex]

Jack Dorsey does seem like the kind of soft touch who'd be easily convinced that bringing in loads of people was needed.

Even better the loads of people they brought in apparently told them to hire more outside contractors to do the actual work 

[Pissy F Benny]

Dorsey seems like the kind of idiot who'd see a tweet linking to some Important Piece and actually click and read it, instead of thinking "suck my dick you fucking clown" and muting the person who linked it

spoiler (click to show/hide)

pretty sure I muted the word important when i was active on there, a lot of people would use it to link to one of their mates shitty blogs/article

[close]

[Potato]

Holy shit, that's obscene to have that many contractors and permanent employees when you're losing that much money.

[Nintex]

I remember the time when Twitter was still a technology company.
They made things like the Bootstrap CSS framework and they had all sorts of widgets for websites and API's as well as probably the most advanced search engine out of all the scocial media platforms at that time.

If you look at their headcount it remained stable up until 2017 or so then it increased from ~3000 to 7500 in 2022.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591876240830504960

[Himu]

LMFAO liberals and leftists are weak, entitled, and lazy? Who would have thought? Kek.

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-manager-says-engineers-he-rehired-are-weak-lazy-unmotivated-2022-11?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab

A Twitter manager says laid-off engineers he's rehired are 'weak, lazy, unmotivated'

- A Twitter manager described laid-off engineers he rehired as "weak, lazy, unmotivated."
- A screenshot of what appeared to be Slack messages has circulated on the Blind app.
- A source confirmed the manager worked for Twitter and said his comments sparked much internal debate.

A Twitter manager who rehired engineers after they lost their jobs in the recent mass layoffs appeared to criticize them on the company's internal messaging system.

A screenshot of the comments made by the senior director of engineering were posted by another Twitter worker on the anonymous forum Blind. They read: "This is going to be the challenge. The engineers I am bringing back are weak, lazy, unmotivated, and they may even be against an Elon Twitter."

"They were cut for a reason, so we need to think of these people as just needing to be around until the knowledge transition is completed," the manager continued.

A source at Twitter who spoke on condition on anonymity confirmed the manager's identity to Insider. The individual's LinkedIn profile showed that they had worked for Twitter since 2013.

The manager has been contacted for comment by Insider.

The comments have sparked much internal debate on Slack, according to Insider's source.

A screenshot of the messages also circulated online, which was also shared by data journalist Joshua Byrd.

The managing editor of the tech-and-democracy focused newsletter Platformer, Zoë Schiffer, tweeted that she had confirmed the manager did work at Twitter but later deleted her tweet saying: "I don't think naming someone at his level is necessary (not because the screenshot isn't real)."

Insider also surveyed Blind, a forum where employees can hold anonymous conversations, and found a post asking users whether they thought Elon Musk would take action following the manager's comments.

Of 157 responses, 60 thought Musk would promote the manager, 56 thought he would do nothing and 41 said he would fire the individual.

Musk fired half Twitter's workforce after taking control, but a few days later some employees were already been asked to come back.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider.

[Uncle]

the question is, do you save enough money by firing thousands, and earn enough money from blue subscribers, to offset the loss from advertisers



is the implication above that twitter initially had 7500 permanent employees, and then an additional 5500 contractors?

so they fired "about half" of the 7500 and then 4400 of the 5500?

8150 people making an average of 100k a year is 815 million dollars saved

if they only made 50k that's 407 million dollars saved

twitter has 400 million users, if 5% of them subscribed to twitter blue for a year that's 20M * 8 * 12 = 1.92 billion dollars

if only 1% subscribed that'd still be 384 million dollars

historically twitter earns about 1 billion per quarter from just advertising, which is 4 billion per year, but I'm not sure what percentage of that might've been lost at this time by advertisers pulling out

however they also have other revenue streams like licensing out user data

 

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591885013913849856

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591935035367723008

https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/1591902285403418624

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591937998551130117

[Polident Hive]

More and more it seems anybody working at Twitter, past present or future, is an asshole.

[Boredfrom]

Elon Musk likes pervy games?

That is the more likeable he has been in years.

[benjipwns]

This seems like a dumb thing to do, Elon seems like the kind of guy who would call your bluff by posting internal spreadsheets on Twitter.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/heidilegg/status/1591858553283051520
https://twitter.com/heidilegg/status/1591860534961655809

Heidi Legg
@heidilegg
Media Accountability. @IQSS @Harvard @ShorensteinCtr @Kennedy_School. Journalism=Democracy. Founder http://TheEditorial.com. Retweets—in awe. Canadian/American.

https://twitter.com/heidilegg/status/1591792818359599105
https://twitter.com/heidilegg/status/1591793872942026754
https://twitter.com/heidilegg/status/1591800636550832129
https://twitter.com/heidilegg/status/1591798479252508672
https://twitter.com/heidilegg/status/1591857720936005634

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/AndrewRCraig/status/1591840907258908673

[close]

[Potato]

https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/1591902285403418624

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591937998551130117

 

Looks like that Eric bitch sat back down. His Twatter profile is 

[Madrun Badrun]

[Polident Hive]

Seeing numerous tweets where people gawk at Musk’s posts getting fact checked. With some zinger about it being his site and spending $44B. All it reveals is how they’d act given a taste of power.

[Boredfrom]

 

[who is ted danson?]

filler come get yo girl

https://twitter.com/animeweedfart69/status/1591121864172396546

https://twitter.com/Bicosmico/status/1591934480557953027

[bork]

https://www.animesenpai.net/mangaka-demands-1-billion-dollars-from-elon-musk-for-using-his-artwork-without-permission/

https://mobile.twitter.com/sato_ken_taro/status/1589513511503552512

The tweet roughly translates as:

Elon Musk, the new CEO of Twitter, has reprinted my picture on Twitter without permission, so please give me 1 billion for the usage fee. in dollars.

Satou Kentarou on Twitter

 

[Tasty]

He's probably crazy enough to actually do it.

[james]

Elon Musk has abandoned his other companies

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592159017270677504

Dealing with the important stuff

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592168994131554304

[james]

https://mobile.twitter.com/zachsilberberg/status/1592228112770924544

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592152556373176321

[Pissy F Benny]

maybe people would like muskrat better if he changed his name to Elon Tweetman

[Nintex]

Elon Musk running Twitter

[who is ted danson?]

"oooo what does this button do"

[HaughtyFrank]

https://twitter.com/johngirvin/status/1592264883898585088

[Tasty]

Seems legit. Benji, you pet it first.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/loudmouthjulia/status/1592201170889904131

[james]

Cancel culture is out of control

https://mobile.twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1592539948745650176

[Occam]

"It’s important to note that Twitter has long cultivated a culture of internal dissent: “Communicate fearlessly to build trust.”

No internal codes of conduct have changed since Elon took over."

Free speech is back!

[who is ted danson?]

Elon should outsource twitter to india

[Uncle]

Cancel culture is out of control

https://mobile.twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1592539948745650176

in times like this I'm reminded of the old social media refrain: freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences

[Occam]

Many people don't seem to understand that freedom of speech means the government won't censor you. It does not mean that private corporations can't restrict your speech.
Anyway, when Musk was rambling about bringing back "free speech" to Twitter, of course he only meant for himself.

[Uncle]

Many people don't seem to understand that freedom of speech means the government won't censor you. It does not mean that private corporations can't restrict your speech.
Musk probably didn't get this either when he claimed he'd bring back "free speech" to Twitter.

right, feel free to say whatever you like in the company Slack, you have total freedom of speech, just be prepared to accept the consequences