So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

Well that's not weird, that's not weird at all.

So, you're saying there is ample fuel to keep a platform going then...?

This is exactly what I have been saying.

It doesn't really matter whether it's dominated by one tribe or the other. Once there is plenty of loonies making a fool of themselves, then twitter will be doing just fine. I think Musk understands this very well... he's been an intimate part of it for a while now. He gets the mass appeal, and it's mostly cringe media. He has just shook the place up a bit, and welcomed in more of the oddballs from the other tribe! 😂

Except hes still not making enough money to keep twitter in the black let alone service the debt hes loaded the company with

Of course I understand the different models of YouTube and Netflix, not stupid! I would query which financially works better and I doubt if anyone knows the full story there.

What is apparent and what you and others seem to be wishing away, is just how you run a service like Twitter and make it pay? What's your idea?

It's quite understandable that media services like this start off as free as various portals vie for market share. But as things mature, the costs of running & developing them further escalate.

Advertising works to a certain extent, when it's new to a site and adverts are thinner, they have impact. But you start selling more & advertising and those purchasing same start to see diminishing returns. You can't flood a social media site with adverts.

So how do you finance the likes of Twitter or on a much lesser scale Boards here? Either a) a large benefactor, philanthropist b) the state i.e. taxpayer or c) subscriptions from those who use the service?

I'd also tack on to that that another money-generating feature that Musk has introduced is the ability to subscribe to some Twitter users, where those users would essentially put some of their content behind a paywall and you can only view it by subscribing to the individual user. However any users who want to generate more income from their content likely already have a Patreon, or Substack, or any of the various "tip"-type systems in place.

What bonus content are you going to get from, say Musk's subscription? Get to see recycled memes from Reddit and 4chan?

I don't know how profitable Twitter was before Musk took over, or indeed how much money it was losing which I believe was the case. But the best course of action would have been increase ads (slightly, not enough to annoy people, but enough to get a bit more revenue), increase the cost of ads, and reduce overheads of the company. Musk has shown there was clearly a bit of fat which could be cut off. I think he's likely gone too far with that in ways that will eventually become evident, and the site has definitely been more glitchy with more downtime than before he took over, but there was likely operational costs which could be cut regardless.

But as Quin_Dub said, Musk has burdened the site with billions in debt. You cannot take a free service which people have used for free for 10+ years and suddenly start locking all advantages of the site behind paywalls and subscriptions without causing an exodus of users who have numerous other sites to go to instead, thereby also affecting ad revenue in the meantime (even ignoring how he p*ssed off so much of the existing advertisers which was a huge portion of their income).

Hey as much as I dislike Musk myself, I hope Twitter keeps going. For what I like about it, it still operates as I want to use it for (ie. never ever talking to anyone or discussing anything or posting anything myself, but just following accounts for general news, info, jokes etc) and is always one of my go-to sites throughout the day.

And it's one of the best places for people making fun of Musk, so win-win.

Part of the problem with so many different sites etc having a subscription model is that consumers then become a lot more picky about what services they subscribe to. Netflix had the streaming market sewn up, but because more and more companies started their own subscription streaming services, piracy has risen substantially because people don't want to or can't afford to have all the streaming services. Likewise with news websites or social media, people will use them all when they're free, but when they start paywalling behind subscriptions, people will pick one or two and not visit the rest.

When it comes to social media, subscription is an even harder sell, because the whole thing about social media is being able to connect with as many other accounts as you want, and people have accounts on different social media sites. Once they start going behind subscription services, the main benefit of social media is gone because everyone will disperse to different sites (if at all). And while you get news from news sites, films/tv from streaming sites etc, social media is going to be something a lot of people just don't pay for.

Its nothing to do with financial viability, the issue is the debt hes lumbered the company with. He likely could make it financially viable and at the very least break even but on top of that servicing 1 billion dollars of debt this year alone is a task he is nowhere close to reaching.

Grand, so how do social media / news sites pay their way?

As it stands, it appears that the likes of Twitter would collapse overnight if Musk just cut his losses and pulled out.

I'm not sure what the answer is but I do know that data and information has value and it's simply unsustainable for the public to expect long term to have free access to data and information at their fingertips. Was a time when you wanted to know something, that you found and asked someone knowledgeable or you bought or borrowed a book or watched & observed. All required effort and often some cost. The fundamentals of that have been pushed aside for a number of years but it can't last.

Advertising - losing it's shine on social media as pointed out above. Between saturation, legislation and ad blockers and so on.

I can't recall purchasing any product or service this year based on a social media advert. I might click on the odd one that catches my eye but that's been it. How about yourself, do adverts work with you?

Obviously they work to some extent, if not purchases then building brand awareness. But all businesses use metrics to decide on how to spend marketing money. And when it pales, they pull.

I am not sure I have ever done it and clicks in tend to be misclicks. Right now my boards ads are all the same idea based off of some searches yesterday. However I have already made up my mind on what I will buy so not sure they will get anything there. Maybe subliminal and I don't know it.

In any case that is the market Elon paid to get into. Maybe if they could get a cut like youtube memberships (I am not a member so not 100% on what they do), twitch, patreon subscriptions but tweets are less content to pay for than videos. Potentially you could make it much cheaper. In any case just because he bought into a questionable business model does not mean anything he subs in is a good idea and this was obviously a bad idea months ago. People got annoyed and insisted that big shots would go crawling back for a blue tick. Then it was a mess with no verification and had to be redone. The price was lowered and now the big shots get it for free and are still unhappy as twitter was saying they had paid for it (essentially trying to fake endorsements).

If your new source of income is just people emotionally invested in you succeeding as opposed to being able to provide a worthwhile product then you are onto a loser.