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Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

(www.nytimes.com)
539 points donohoe | 11 comments | 09 Jul 25 14:52 UTC | HN request time: 2.643s | source | bottom
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Hoasi ◴[09 Jul 25 15:21 UTC] 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 ◴[09 Jul 25 16:05 UTC] 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 ◴[09 Jul 25 16:44 UTC] 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 ◴[09 Jul 25 16:49 UTC] No.44512222[source]▶
Has it tanked? X is still running, it still has millions of users.
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reverendsteveii ◴[09 Jul 25 16:55 UTC] No.44512287[source]▶
it's worth less than half of what he paid for it, lost 30 million users and went from being the default microblog to facing real competition in daily active users from ~~bluesky~~threads (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/threads-is-nearing-xs-dail...). Building what X is today from nothing would be an incredible accomplishment but building what X is today out of what Twitter was in 2022 is still a pretty miserable failure.

Not to mention that now Grok is just openly white supremacist, calling itself MechaHitler and is flat out accusing Jewish people of wanting to kill white babies (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisem...)

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1. mrweasel ◴[09 Jul 25 17:37 UTC] No.44512793[source]▶
> it's worth less than half of what he paid for it

But it was always worth less that half of the purchase price. The Twitter board completely ripped of Musk. Remember that he tried to back out of the deal, arguing that he had been lied to in regards to the number of bots and actual users.

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2. miltonlost ◴[09 Jul 25 18:02 UTC] No.44513054[source]▶
The Twitter board ripped him off? When he was the one who brought in the initial offer? He tried to back out of the deal once people told him how foolish he is.
3. joering2 ◴[09 Jul 25 18:28 UTC] No.44513334[source]▶
> Remember that he tried to back out of the deal, arguing that he had been lied to in regards to the number of bots and actual users.

True but since he never provided any hard numbers, especially after totally owning the thing, makes this point moot.

4. mvdtnz ◴[09 Jul 25 18:46 UTC] No.44513501[source]▶
They ripped him off? He made an unsolicited offer, signed, sealed and delivered.
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5. moomin ◴[09 Jul 25 19:09 UTC] No.44513731[source]▶
This argument has been made, at length, in court. It was found wanting.
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6. AtlanticThird ◴[09 Jul 25 19:40 UTC] No.44514008[source]▶
Good thing 35% of the country still trusts the courts https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-courts-ame...
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7. theshackleford ◴[10 Jul 25 02:08 UTC] No.44516534[source]▶
> The Twitter board completely ripped of Musk.

He ripped himself off because he couldn’t keep his big trap shut.

8. freejazz ◴[10 Jul 25 04:21 UTC] No.44517128[source]▶
Did he argue in that case that it was worth less than half the purchase price? I do recall he argued it was a material misrepresentation by twitter, but that the terms of the contract ran against him there. I do not recall it having been valued to that extent. It did seem like a facially bullshit excuse at the time. I'm curious as to why you're credulously repeating it now, after it's already been disposed of.
9. reverendsteveii ◴[10 Jul 25 13:21 UTC] No.44520722[source]▶
You'll remember that first he waived the right to make his offer contingent on that fact, then he tried to back his offer out because of that fact.
10. reverendsteveii ◴[10 Jul 25 20:02 UTC] No.44524895{3}[source]▶
Not at all relevant. Address the merits of the argument, not whether or not most people like the person who heard it. Though you'll be happy to find out that this disagreement never actually made it to court and eventually Elon went through with his original deal voluntarily.
11. reverendsteveii ◴[10 Jul 25 20:03 UTC] No.44524912[source]▶
When you're used to having an entire team of people to act as a buffer between your impulses and their easily predictable consequences following through on your commitments and getting exactly what you asked for feels unfair.