Followers of Elon Musk’s Twitter account will know that the world’s richest man is partial to attention-grabbing statements. Even so, it was notable when he told Twitter staff this month that bankruptcy at the company isn’t out of the question.
Twitter’s owner has admitted that the business has suffered a “massive drop in revenue” after campaign groups raised concerns about content moderation standards and warned the company’s remaining staff this month that it could lose billions of dollars next year.
Will the world’s richest man really let an influential social media platform go bust? At least not in the short term, experts say. But advertisers are Twitter’s main source of revenue – 90% of Twitter’s $5.1bn (£4.2bn) turnover last year – and his decisions over reinstating banned accounts risk alienating them further. On top of that, he needs money to service interest costs on the near $13bn of debt he took on to buy the business for $44bn.
No, that’s not the point Musk made.
Rather, that if the firm – as with any other firm – carries seven levels of bureaucracy all getting fat and happy off market level wages then it is indeed possible that it will go bust in the fullness of time. Therefore something needs to change – fire half the staff for example.
His comment wasn’t about he’s bought it, whoopsie, at all.