[latency-guy2]

Why? The business was weeks away from shutting down in 2015 under original ownership, Twitter looked to be saved from 2018 - 2019, but not really, seeing as 2018-2019 were the only 2 profitable years for Twitter ever

Twitter was leaking money for 2020 and 2021, the trend looked to be continuing for 2022, they had an OK first quarter, and maybe they were going to continue to do well, but I sincerely doubt it seeing how every single tech stock has performed this year. Q2 alone blew away $344 million loss compared to Q1's $513 million gain. I also sincerely doubt Twitter was being led well by looking at their earnings reports and the money hole that punctured the company coffers in 2020Q2. The middling performance through 2021 continued when that should've been Twitter's best years, all other tech stocks even ad agencies were printing money, why was Twitter not doing the same?

I think Twitter board's best decision they ever made was offloading the company off to Elon, cut their losses for a clearly failing company with little to no headwind coming their way for the next few quarters at minimum.

But I do need to know why does Elon get the brunt of the blame for Twitter's presumed downfall? Seems like Twitter was already a falling knife by itself

[parker_mountain]

> why does Elon get the brunt of the blame for Twitter's presumed downfall

A few reasons

- he's greatly accelerating its decline in a highly visible and embarrassing way

- he got ripped off. $44b is a hilariously bad deal. He could have saved a few billion and used it to run twitter, at a minor loss, for many years.

- and lastly: he tried to catch a falling knife and is standing around pretending he isn't bleeding. Considering the hubris he has put on display over the past 5 years or so, everyone's taking a moment to enjoy the show.

[jagged-chisel]

Are you really "getting ripped off" if you came in with a ridiculously high offer (when no one asked) and they accepted it because they'd be crazy not to?

"I've got this old beater that I'm tired of working out of every day."

    Your food truck sucks and your food is no better. You should sell churros.

"Churros don't really match our poboy sandwiches."

    I can fix this, I'll just buy you out for a million dollars.

"... ok, sounds good to me."

    What do you mean the truck is only worth about three grand? I want out of this deal.

"Here's the signed contract..."

Indented guy above didn't get ripped off.

[pram]

Even ignoring EM's post-acquisition decisions, adding $13 billion of debt to the company certainly doesn't help the situation.

[lmm]

It's the right thing to do with a sinking ship that needs to take big risks. Twitter's previous shareholders are surely very happy with how much money he's taken out of bankers' pockets and put into theirs.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

From Q3 2017 to Q1 2022, Twitter only lost money in two quarters and was obviously profitable overall: https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-incom...

Your breathless narration of that data is certainly a master class in spin. Maybe the company was performing far below what would be possible. But it is hard to look at the data and conclude that there was any imminent risk of its demise.

[philliphaydon]

Twitter posted a net loss of $221 million in 2021, and a $1.1 billion loss in 2020.

Quarters are only good for forecasting and deciding what to do. Financial year is what matters overall. That’s an indicator of the overall success for the year.

[Marazan]

I wonder if anything unusual happened in 2020?

[Macha]

In retrospect, most online-only tech companies had a great time during the unusual thing, so much so many of them made the mistake of hiring like the same trends would continue

[Marazan]

"Only 2 profitable years ever"

Insanely profitable. those 2 years had more profit than the previous 8 years of loses.

Jack then fucked it up over the pandemic by massively over hiring but Twitter's profit margins in 2018 and 2019 were insane.

[cwilkes]

Because Elon caught a falling knife?