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538 points donohoe | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.842s | source | bottom
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Hoasi ◴[] No.44511157[source]
X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.
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mrweasel ◴[] No.44511712[source]
More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there.

The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember that while many agree that $44B was a bit much, most did still put Twitter at 10s of billions, not the $500M I think you could justify.

The firings, which was going to tank Twitter also turned out reasonably well. Turns out they didn't need all those people.

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moomin ◴[] No.44512165[source]
I think it’s hard to conclude that the people weren’t needed given how spectacularly it tanked.
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mrweasel ◴[] No.44512222[source]
Has it tanked? X is still running, it still has millions of users.
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1. amrocha ◴[] No.44512346[source]
Revenue and monthly active users are still lower than in 2022, and decreasing. And thats based on estimates, because twitter doesn’t report those numbers.
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2. ◴[] No.44512737[source]
3. mrweasel ◴[] No.44512742[source]
Revenue is meaningless for a company that has never been close to covering the cost of building it.

Monthly active users, fair, but it also depends on the type of users that remain. My take still is that the users X cares about are politicians, journalists and the general elite. They are still on X. It doesn't matter that some random tech worker switched to Bluesky or Mastodon, those were never profitable anyway, complained a lot and used third party apps.

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4. basisword ◴[] No.44512779[source]
Having those users doesn't matter if the people they are trying to communicate with leave - as eventually they will too. Every single person I know who used Twitter (which was already the least popular of the main social networks in my region) has deleted their account. Politicians and journalists shouting into a void isn't sustainable.
5. sjsdaiuasgdia ◴[] No.44513004[source]
> for a company that has never been close to covering the cost of building it

Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019

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6. mrweasel ◴[] No.44513161{3}[source]
I was going to argue that they lost most of the 2019 profit in 2020, but you are technically correct (the best kind). Twitter probably made around $1.5B in profit ever, maybe a little more. That actually should just about cover the cost of building the company.

I was wrong.