[prawn]

As for what he's doing, I think it's pretty transparent. He thinks Xs are really, really cool. And perhaps that bird-themes aren't very cool. He loves the idea of an everything app 'like they have in Asia'. And he's addicted to Twitter enough that he got stuck buying it.

So now we have this insane situation where he's going to throw away a strong brand that has an outsized influence in global media by converting it to become the do-everything app, and rename it to his favourite, cool letter. I don't think there's a secret plan beyond that.

I have no idea why he didn't just buy Twitter, keep it strong, and then leverage it to push a do-everything app (that could be called X for all anyone cares).

[worrycue]

> keep it strong

My theory is that he is desperate. He was forced to buy it. The interest from his loans to buy Twitter are estimated at a billion a year - and now interest rates are high so he can’t swap them for cheaper loans. That’s not an insignificant amount of money even for someone like him.

Thus his cutting cost to the bone, even refusing to play bills/rent for as long as possible, and all the harebrained ideas about what to do with Twitter - clearly staying the course is not acceptable since Twitter turned a profit I think only twice in its entire existence; both times where during the pandemic.

[HWR_14]

He wasn't forced to buy Twitter. He was forced to complete the sale he insisted he be allowed to start.

But the changes in the market were not entirely against him. It's not that interest rates are high so that he cannot refinance. He had semi-floating rate (floats up to a maximum), so refinancing would never be necessary. It is currently pegged to the highest level. But it is still locked in at a much lower rate than the market rate.

And a billion is less of an estimate than a rounding. The amount of the loan, the interest rate, etc. are all public knowledge because he had to file the terms and contracts with the SEC.

Meanwhile, I'm not convinced it's "not an insignificant amount of money" is the appropriate phrasing. It's a lot of money to him, but certainly something he can afford. Jeff Bezos famously put that much each quarter (so 4x the rate) into Blue Origin.

[worrycue]

> Meanwhile, I'm not convinced it's "not an insignificant amount of money" is the appropriate phrasing. It's a lot of money to him, but certainly something he can afford. Jeff Bezos famously put that much each quarter (so 4x the rate) into Blue Origin.

Still the billion a year is paid out to the banks and not used to run Twitter.

I wonder how much Twitter is making/losing now. Sure they cut a lot of staff but income must be in the toilet with ad revenues down due to advertisers getting cold feet and now rate limits further reducing the number of eyeballs.

[cubefox]

> My theory is that he is desperate. He was forced to buy it.

Yeah, and now people are deriding him for that, which makes no sense. As far as I know, he made an offer, had to publicly announce it beforehand (due to law), then the stock market tanked, making the Twitter purchase nearly unaffordable for him. Then Twitter was loaded with massive debt. Very bad luck. But people hate him so they are satisfied with any misfortune he may have.

[wredue]

Uh no.

He purchased a huge amount of twitter stock, and simultaneously made the public offer at like 4x twitters current stock value. Twitter pumped on the news, which was exactly Musks plan.

The stock market crash did not all of a sudden make twitter worth next to nothing on the offer. Musk was attempting to pump and dump the stock, and it backfired on him.

Even at the “rainbows and unicorns” drug induced tech stock valuations we’ve been seeing lately, twitter wasn’t worth 1/3 what musk offered to buy it at.

The stock market tanking has literally nothing to do with why this was a bad deal.

When you’re a public company and some coked off his ass idiot billionaire offers you 3x your companies current already highly inflated value, you are essentially forced by the shareholders to sell.

[cubefox]

> He purchased a huge amount of twitter stock, and simultaneously made the public offer at like 4x twitters current stock value.

That's a lie. See

https://images.app.goo.gl/see6HtsjsuSZMioP9

[dragonwriter]

> Yeah, and now people are deriding him for that

People have been mocking him for the price, the no-due-diligence clause, and other aspects of the contract since they became public. While later movement of the stock market may have made it even worse for him, it was a ridiculous deal, on its face, at the time negotiated (and even worse for Musk as a buyer given his public comments about Twitter.)

[cubefox]

How was it a ridiculous deal at the time? He paid what the company was worth just a few months before. I think it is normal for acquisitions to be higher than the current stock price. Initially it wasn't even clear whether the deal would go through. Had his offer been significantly lower, he may have not succeeded.

https://images.app.goo.gl/see6HtsjsuSZMioP9

[prawn]

I think he's cultivated that negative reaction himself; he just can't help himself. Once upon a time, his reputation was primarily as the action man heavily driving forward key industries. There might've been a few "he's just the figurehead, others do the work despite him" sorts on here, but mostly sentiment on a tech site would've been favourable. Hell, years back, I thought he had a decent claim on Person of the Year.

He's really gone out of his way since to polarise the public, for limited benefit.

[cubefox]

> I think he's cultivated that negative reaction himself;

No, my point was that all the derision was undeserved and you didn't provide evidence to the contrary. Journalists just hate him.

[soerxpso]

Doing it this way instead of your suggestion seems to be garnering a lot of free press. Many companies would pay large sums of money for the reach he's gotten just for changing the logo to a letter (and it's yet to be seen whether the change is permanent, or just a temporary publicity play).

[prawn]

He can get easy press doing anything including with the route I'd outlined. Meta got global coverage for Threads without sacrificing Instagram or Facebook.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Free press - most of it negative.

This is textbook Management by Logo. When you're out of ideas you change the name/logo and now suddenly you're dynamic forward-looking innovative etc.

Except not really. Management by Logo is like respraying a car engine because you don't know how to fix it. There's a fair-to-good chance you'll make things more broken rather than less.

Musk bought Twitter (RIP...) because he wanted to use it as a propaganda outlet for his own crazy Randian/Trumpish ideals. It was never meant to continue as a free and open discussion site for humans.

Musk appears to have plans to spray AI and other magic dead chickens all over everything to create a new automated kind of propaganda outlet.

I suspect that won't work. Outside of his circle of immediate fans, people don't like being talked down to - especially not by bots.

[nprateem]

Classic Johnson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkELicRkq1I

[dragonwriter]

> As for what he's doing, I think it's pretty transparent. He thinks Xs are really, really cool.

Long before X was the holding company he used to buy Twitter, which he is now trying to turn into a do everything (including finance) app, X(.com) was the online financt company Musk openly wanted to turn ibto a do everything app, and was dump as CEO from multiple times, the last time just before it was renamed after a product it had acquired with another company, and which (unlike the products Musk tried to launch internally) was its only meaningful success, PayPal.

> I have no idea why he didn't just buy Twitter, keep it strong, and then leverage it to push a do-everything app (that could be called X for all anyone cares).

Because he overburdened it with debt, meaning the turnaround has to be quick to work at all, and his do-everything plan is premised on a change in revenue model from traditional big ads to free/low-paying users to a more regular-user fee-for-service model.