I had a reader ping me on, ironically Twitter to send me this. Advanced warning, this may not be suitable for work:
After I picked my jaw off the ground, I dug around for some context to this rather bizarre moment and found it here:
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of X (formerly Twitter), says that the current advertiser boycott could “kill the company.”
“What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it is going to kill the company,” Musk said Wednesday. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company.”
Musk was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin Wednesday afternoon at The New York Times Dealbook Summit, capping off a day of speakers that included Vice President Kamala Harris, FTC chair Lina Khan, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and PGA commissioner Jay Monahan.
He also responded to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who explained his company’s decision to pull advertising from the platform earlier.
“Don’t advertise. If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself,” Musk said. “Go fuck yourself, is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.”
Well, that’s really going to encourage advertisers to come back to Twitter. All this does is reinforce the fact that Elon Musk is not playing with a full deck. And after dropping the f-bomb a couple of times, he then apparently tried to walk back his Twitter response to a Antisemitic trope on Twitter. Judge for yourself:
Musk did say of the post that sparked the advertiser exodus that “I should, in retrospect, not have replied to that particular post, and should have expanded in greater length about what I meant.”
“I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me,” he added, calling it “one of the most foolish” things he had said on the platform. Later, after calling Sorkin “Jonathan,” Musk quipped that “what I am trying to illustrate is that, sometimes I say the wrong thing.”
I’m personally not buying this. Are you? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
What’s even worse is that Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino was in the audience watching this debacle. And she Tweeted this:
That pretty much confirms that she’s part of the problem now and not someone who can guide Twitter to a better place. And she clearly not smart enough to listen to her friends who are telling her to get out before she destroys her reputation.
What’s clear from this debacle is that Elon completely off his rocker. And this will simply accelerate the departure of advertisers from Twitter. I wonder if Elon will start caring once Twitter is in critical condition with no hope of recovery? By the time he does, if he actually does care, it may be too late.
Elon Musk Gets Desperate When It Comes To Advertisers On Twitter
Posted in Commentary with tags Twitter on December 1, 2023 by itnerdClearly Elon Musk’s F-bomb laced tirade has had significant knock on effects. It seems to have accelerated the departure of advertisers from Twitter. Which I did predict here:
What’s clear from this debacle is that Elon completely off his rocker. And this will simply accelerate the departure of advertisers from Twitter. I wonder if Elon will start caring once Twitter is in critical condition with no hope of recovery? By the time he does, if he actually does care, it may be too late.
According to this story, the departures likely have started:
The Tesla chief also acknowledged that an extended boycott by advertisers could bankrupt X, formerly Twitter, but suggested that the public would blame the brands and not him for a potential collapse.
However, Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said: “If anyone is killing X, it’s Elon Musk – not advertisers.”
“Should X collapse, an autopsy would reveal a series of platform policy decisions, staffing cuts, tweets and antagonistic comments by Musk that have driven away X’s primary source of revenue,” Enberg said.
An executive at a major global ad-buying firm, who declined to be named, said only one major client was continuing to advertise on X.
“(Musk) seems to be hell bent on destroying the platform,” the executive said.
And:
“We believe there is a risk that more companies will stop advertising on X; at least on a short-term basis,” D.A. Davidson & Co analyst Tom Forte said.
“It is fair to say this makes the company’s subscription efforts more important and potentially means it may need more than half its revenue to come from subscriptions,” he said.
So how is Elon going to square this circle? The Financial Times is reporting that X is now going to be focusing on smaller businesses. The story is paywalled, but a TL:DR is available on The Verge with the key point from the article. At least from a Twitter perspective:
‘Small and medium businesses are a very significant engine that we have definitely underplayed for a long time,’ the company told the Financial Times. ‘It [was] always part of the plan — now we will go even further with it.’
Here’s the problem with that strategy. I don’t see how getting a bunch of small and medium sized businesses on board will make up the revenue shortfall of a Disney or IBM, or Apple individually, never mind all three of those companies combined. This seems more like a Hail Mary more than a real strategy that could produce real revenue. And given the fact that subscriptions aren’t exactly raking in the cash for Twitter, that means only one thing. Which is Elon has doomed Twitter to a slow and painful death. And his latest stunt has accelerated the death of the platform. Anything he does now is simply delaying the inevitable. There’s just no denying it at this point.
Congratulations Elon. You’ve proven how bad you are at running a company.
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