The great Twitter cleaning has begun

[17thfabn]

5 hours ago, Harold Jones said:

We know that when Twitter was a public company that it was losing money every quarter and there's no evidence that that has changed since the takeover.  

It is a known that Musk slashed the employee rolls. So that is a net positive for the balance sheet.

Do we have any idea if add revenue is up, down or nuetral? 

[Harold Jones]

I don't think there's a real way to tell.  Personally I use an add blocker and don't use the app so I have no idea if there are more, less or lower tier adds on the site.  There haven't been any more mass layoffs but there have been stories about late rent and late payments to suppliers but that could be down to poorly handled transitions that happened due to the cuts he made when he took over.

[Murph]

OMG, this is so true and so funny!

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/04/11/bye-bye-birdie-twitter-inc-dies-x-corp-is-born-according-to-a-court-filing-n1686151

 

Quote

Investigative journalist Laura Loomer shared a screenshot of what appears to be a court filing from April 4. The filing says, “Pursuant to Rule 7.1(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the undersigned counsel for Defendant X Corp., as successor in interest to named Defendant Twitter, Inc., hereby states that Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists. X Corp. is a privately held corporation. Its parent corporation is X Holdings Corp. No publicly traded corporation owns 10% or more of the stock of X Corp. or X Holding Corp.”

 

I can't find it again, but some wag out there opined that Musk is planning to pivot around Twitter to get into other social media markets. I'm no Elon Musk to be sure, but with the way that social media platforms birth/rise/die frequently, its hard to see any enduring profit to be gotten by going head-to-head with Youtube, Instagram or whatever. 

 

[rmgill]

Remember, Musk owns a rocket firm that will, in 10 years probably be extracting native metals from near earth asteroids. Those are not ORE which has been on earth degrading and being changed by chemical processes from what was made in a star's explosion, it will instead be pure iron, nickel and other more rare metals that are high in value. 

Musk pulling in a speech/broadcast platform and then pivoting to acquire another is entirely within the realm of making sure he's positioned to help control some of the narrative that might be directed against him for what ever reasons the government media apparatus might decide they want to swing against him. 

He's the man most likely to be a Tyler Vernon. 

I really need to figure out how to work for him. 

Edited April 12, 2023 by rmgill

[17thfabn]

22 hours ago, Murph said:

OMG, this is so true and so funny!

 

👍

 

[17thfabn]

I heard one report that twitteer under Musk went from 8,000 to 1,500 employees.

If every one of those employees cost $100,000 on average, which is a conservative figure with salary, SS tax, medicare tax, unemployment tax, health insurance, employer match for 401 K etc. that is a chunk of money.

My simple math is $100,000 per employee cut X 6,500 would be 650 million a year towards getting in the black.

[DKTanker]

3 hours ago, 17thfabn said:

I heard one report that twitteer under Musk went from 8,000 to 1,500 employees.

If every one of those employees cost $100,000 on average, which is a conservative figure with salary, SS tax, medicare tax, unemployment tax, health insurance, employer match for 401 K etc. that is a chunk of money.

My simple math is $100,000 per employee cut X 6,500 would be 650 million a year towards getting in the black.

Salary x 1.4 = labor cost.  That's the general rule of thumb businesses use.  A larger multiplier if there are greater incentives.  Software engineers in CA average 137k, so 137 x 1.4 =@ 192k.  192k x 6500 = (If they are all software engineers and if those employees were all in CA), then Musk pared over $1.2B in annual labor costs.

Edited April 12, 2023 by DKTanker

[Harold Jones]

He did an interview with the BBC the other day.  I haven't listened to it but there are a few quotes from it on the page.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65248196

Quote

On buying Twitter: "It's not been boring. It has been quite a rollercoaster... It's been really quite a stressful situation."

On laying off staff: "I wouldn't say it was uncaring... If the whole ship sinks, then nobody's got a job."

On profits: "We could be profitable, or to be more precise, cash flow positive this quarter if things keep going well. I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back."

On his controversial tweets: "Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes."

On labelling the BBC as "Government-funded media": "We're adjusting the label to... publicly funded... If we use the same words that the BBC uses to describes itself, then presumably that would be OK."

 

 

[DKTanker]

Elon the Destroyer.  I'm sorry, was saying that "hate speech"?

 

[Harold Jones]

4 hours ago, rmgill said:

...I really need to figure out how to work for him. 

They have a ton of open positions, most of which seem to be located in California or Washington state.  Elon doesn't believe in remote work so anything you get will require relocation.  This one looks like it coul work for you 

https://boards.greenhouse.io/spacex/jobs/6598696002?gh_jid=6598696002

[Ivanhoe]

https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/breaking-elon-musk-tells-tucker-carlson-govt-agencies-had-full-access-to-twitter-paub/

 

[Harold Jones]

One less competitor for Twitter https://mashable.com/article/parler-acquired-shut-down 

Quote

Conservative social media platform Parler acquired and then immediately shut down by new owner
"No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more," said Parler's new owner.

I think this is the one that got famous first for a truly atrocious launch and then for being kicked out of the apple and google app stores.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Harold Jones

[DKTanker]

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk explained that US government intelligent agencies essentially had full and unfettered access to Twitter to include surveilling Direct Messaging.  He said that Twitter is working fine with just 20% of the pre-acquisition payroll.  He also acknowledged that they had recently valued the company at half of last year's acquisition price.  He did, however, suggest that freedom of speech is priceless.

[rmgill]

On 4/12/2023 at 5:47 PM, Harold Jones said:

They have a ton of open positions, most of which seem to be located in California or Washington state.  Elon doesn't believe in remote work so anything you get will require relocation.  This one looks like it coul work for you 

https://boards.greenhouse.io/spacex/jobs/6598696002?gh_jid=6598696002

California is out. Redmond, Washington is...meh...

[Ivanhoe]

1 hour ago, DKTanker said:

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk explained that US government intelligent agencies essentially had full and unfettered access to Twitter to include surveilling Direct Messaging.  He said that Twitter is working fine with just 20% of the pre-acquisition payroll.  He also acknowledged that they had recently valued the company at half of last year's acquisition price.  He did, however, suggest that freedom of speech is priceless.

 

Only in the sense that it works as before. There are fundamental UI design flaws. If Musk wants to avoid Twitter becoming the MySpace of the 2020s, he oughta fix some things. 

 

[DKTanker]

30 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said:

 

Only in the sense that it works as before. There are fundamental UI design flaws. If Musk wants to avoid Twitter becoming the MySpace of the 2020s, he oughta fix some things. 

 

Currently he has directed Twitter to create encrypted DMs that users can turn on and off as they desire.  His desire is that encryption will be so robust that nobody at Twitter, including himself, will be able to turn off.  Says Musk, they should be rolling this out in a month or so.  If that timeline is anything like his SpaceX timeline...might be 18 months?

So while this isn't exactly a UI question, it goes back to his ideal of having free speech.  I'm guessing he's going to stay on that tact before working on nice things and baubles.

[sunday]

Too funny

[Murph]

On 4/17/2023 at 8:22 PM, DKTanker said:

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk explained that US government intelligent agencies essentially had full and unfettered access to Twitter to include surveilling Direct Messaging.  He said that Twitter is working fine with just 20% of the pre-acquisition payroll.  He also acknowledged that they had recently valued the company at half of last year's acquisition price.  He did, however, suggest that freedom of speech is priceless.

This.  

[Ivanhoe]

https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/twitter-faucifiles-drops-revealing-collusion-between-platform-and-big-pharma/

 

Quote

Paul D. Thacker, a journalist with vast experience in publishing stories on science, medicine, and the environment, was tasked with analyzing the material related to Fauci. Unlike many “reporters” covering science news, Tacker has an actual degree in science (biology) and worked as a laboratory technician.

 

Quote

The records Thacker revealed show that Twitter and Johnson & Johnson were coordinating a marketing strategy, using the messaging power of the platform to convince people vaccines were safe and effective.

 

 

 

[Tim Sielbeck]

 

[Der Zeitgeist]

 

[urbanoid]

[Ivanhoe]

lol

-----

I was going to pontificate on the majority of brainless MSM reporting on Musk's rocket, but the memeverse beat me to it;

 

[Murph]

Well Elon just appointed a woke, globalist, BLM, anti-capitalist, pro communist, pro censoring woman as CEO of Twitter.  Shadowbanning, thought crime police incoming.