Thursday, April 14, 2022

My Unsolicited and Probably Ignorant and Useless Opinion of Elon Musk's Offer to Buy Twitter

I don't think he should, even if the offer was likely to be accepted.

He values the company at $43.4 billion.

What kind of competitor to Twitter could he quickly build for half that amount, with the other half as an operating cushion until it's in profit?

It's not like Twitter is a start-up with some novel new patented technology that won't be available to others for years. It's an established company that has up sides and down sides to its existing infrastructure and operations. Musk could build the social media platform he wants to see, instead of trying to remodel a fixer-upper that's getting long in the tooth. He could incorporate cryptocurrency hooks into the platform from the start instead of trying to find places to hang them on those peeling, yellowed Twitter walls.

What Twitter offers him is a large user base from the start, and an existing set of revenue streams.

But based on a quick web search, Twitter's user base (396.5 million) isn't as large as TikTok's, which is relatively new and has more than 1 billion users. So it's obviously possible to catch up with and surpass Twitter if people like what you have to offer. And where the users are, the revenue potential goes.

I bet a well-built Musk social media platform would sign up ten million new users its first day if its servers could handle the volume -- and an average of a million or more per day for at least the first year

On the content end, I could see SpaceX and Tesla streaming their launches and public events live only on a platform he starts. Not to mention Musk himself doing stuff exclusively there.

Speaking of which, if he wants to buy an existing brand and remodel or re-launch it, this one would probably be much cheaper and its name recalls his previous outings.

Build it and they will come.

But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

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