Will Twitter Take Down Musk?

It appears that Elon Musk is being eaten alive by Twitter.  The former owner(s) did not have this problem because they were heavily subsidized by the US domestic-spying operations:  FBI, CIA, NSA, (etc.)  (No, you didn't read that in the Federal Budget papers.  Guess why?)

Anyhow, Musk's cost problems are extremely serious, which is why he recently cut back on engagement.

That's the theory offered by Last Refuge, anyway.

...With 217 million users, you could expect 50 million simultaneous users on Twitter during peak operating times.  My back of the envelope calculations, which are really just estimations based on known industry costs for data performance and functions per second (pfp), would put the data cost to operate Twitter around $200 to $300 million per month.

In 2021, Twitter generated $5.1 billion in revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.  According to the New York Times, in 2023 that revenue has dropped to around $1 billion per year.

Musk stated during public conversation that Twitter was essentially break even at $4 billion, which was the position in 2022 just prior to his taking over.  [2022 costs around $4.5 billion and revenue around $4 billion +/-, per public financial statements and reporting].   Musk cut approximately $500 million in expenses from realignment and staffing reductions.

Musk has a $1.5 billion debt service on the loan he took out, per his own admission: that’s more than $100 million per month.  The debt service alone is higher than his revenue.  As I noted last month, Twitter is losing somewhere around $300 million per month.  With $1 billion liquid in the bank, as of June (per Musk), that only gets him to September; by October, he needs another influx of cash, or else.

There is no business model, even with paying subscribers, for Twitter to exist without a major increase in revenue (Yaccarino) or a major decrease in costs.  As the business grows (more users), the costs increase (more simultaneous users), and the costs to subscribers would grow.  Twitter Blue subscriptions are around 180,000 users, paying $11/mo.  That’s around $2 million a month- a pittance in comparison to what he needs....

Musk must change the Twitter operation to include 'original content' which will get him some serious advertising dollars. That's why Tucker Carlson showed up there, and you can expect more of such stuff--or .......