• UnknownQuantity@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    121
    ·
    1 year ago

    So let me get this straight. Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion, fired most of the staff, destroyed bunch of features and functionality, scared advertisers away and now changed the brand’s name. Wouldn’t it be less hassle to just start a platform and pay people $100 each as a sign up bonus?

    • wjrii@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      62
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s absurd! Assuming 4 billion in actual startup costs, at the purchase price they could only afford to do that for…

      four hundred million people. LOL.

      Jesus this was a dumb transaction.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        1 year ago

        Just for perspective, the U.S. population is 300 million. Add on the 67 million population of the UK and you still have plenty of change left over.

        Jesus, this was a stupid decision.

    • Ryumast3r@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      There are currently ~366 million Twitter users.

      If Musk paid each person $100 to start using “X” instead, he’d spend $36.6 billion, leaving him with $7.4 billion to actually build the rest of the website and infrastructure.

      Yup, he’s stupid.

    • athos77@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Copying my comment from another thread:

      But they’re not just re-branding. Twitter is now under some kind of corporate shell company. I haven’t seen much coverage of that, but my suspicion is that it’s intended to act as some kind of insulator to contain Twitter’s debts.

      Like when they break a company into pieces and put everyone’s debts and no assets into a single part and then that part declares bankruptcy and all the debt magically goes away, leaving everything else with lots of assets and no debts and a future that looks really rosy. I can’t help but think that this is something similar to that.