You'd think so, but it's been clear for a while that Dorsey and the board have fundamentally different views of the world and how Twitter should interact with it. His input doesn't count.
Board members' opinions always count. However, individually, they may not be influential enough to change the direction of the company, which I think is what you are saying?
That's what I assumed. The only BoD whose operations I am intimately familiar with has a ...slightly smaller...market cap.
In that place, the BoD is basically networking central - people get put on the board if the company thinks their connections will help the company out. I suppose they also weigh in on important decisions, but bringing along their Rolodex seems like the reason they are there (and I was assuming that is not so important when you are a $40B+ globally known company)
No surprise there - he has been trying to distance himself for some time. Not surprising they agreed to sell so fast. Now it will Musk's headache (seriously doubt the deal will go through). Musk's twitter obsession is ruining his reputation. Owning this turd will likely accelerate that.
That's not how it works – he has to go through with the deal unless one of the possible reasons he may back out for (and pay the US$1 billion) comes into being.
Publicly implying won't let him back out for free. He needs to prove twitter acted in bad faith or "material adverse effect." No such evidence has been provided. BTW material adverse effect is an very hard standard to prove it needs to “substantially threaten the overall earnings potential of the target in a durationally-significant manner."
He waived contingency on due diligence. He has no right to back out on the basis of the due diligence he should have done before he signed the contract. A court can order him to complete the purchase as committed ('specific performance').
Like reporting inflated numbers. Whatever - then he is stuck with not being able to change anything. Or we will see a protracted court battle. Or Twitter will take their billion and be happy.
Musk's twitter account has a famously tenuous relationship with reality. He declined to perform due diligence, and his attempted pullout was contemporaneous with the TSLA stock (which his loan is leveraged against) plummeting. We'll probably see how it all plays out after years of protracted court battles. If I was Jack, I wouldn't want to stick around for that drama either.
I’m very confused by all the news articles being wishy wash on this, but while I understand what you say to be the truth, I think the reality is we won’t know what the “actual” consequences are until 1. Musk makes some kind of decision official, 2. Twitter sues to force him to complete the deal and 3. A judge decides.
As I understand it, it costs him a billion to get out of it only under a list of circumstances, none of which applies. Which means Twitter could go to court and likely would get the court to force Musk to by Twitter at the full $54.20 price.
Does twitter really want a drawn out legal battle with someone who has a history of squirming out of regulatory issues? I feel like I'd much rather take the billion and wash my hands of it.
Yes, if it means many billions more, Twitter will absolutely go to court over it.
Musk avoiding regulatory issues with agencies is a very different thing from incurring the wrath of a court. A judge can order jail time, fines, etc., to bring Musk into compliance with court orders.
Since he has realized the risk of using Tesla stock to back this purchase - he has acquired investors. Investors will want returns on their investment other than "Free Speech" BS. Some of the things he is proposing will hurt Twatter financially like shutting down bots. It is those very same bots that give the impression that Twitter is influential. Hence he will either not be able to deliver his promises or he will find some excuse not to buy.
I once worked for a non-profit no less that was trying to use "Article Views" as a new metric to rank academic articles. I did some simple things to filter out some rather obvious bots. Nothing fancy. That reduced the page views %75. Needless to say even the Non-Profit was seduced buy the inflated numbers hoping it would attract more authors. Followers=BullSh*T
Advertisers hate bots. As a user I only hate spammers (which are mostly beggars), but some users worry about bots because they want to believe Twitter can be representative of voters.
Not engaging with your claim about what is the "correct answer" to this question asked of another user about something they said, I assume this comment is being downvoted because it blatantly violates the site's community guidelines.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
This is an extremely sparse remark about a controversial issue.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
The question was asked generally, not of a particular user.
The answer is pretty clear; here's an article in the Washington Post observing that all the complaints about Elon Musk taking over Twitter are Democrats anxious about the idea that this is bad for the Democratic Party: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/28/musk-purc...
Both Musk and Bezos are fighting back. The word billionaire has been a political football for Democrats for a while now. The word billionaire is so built into the left ideology now they just saying the word insinuates every kind of evil. I'm sure that does wonders for America's entrepreneurial spirit
You think all those folks who make billions by being ruthless in business and then create a charitable trust in their name are donating money just out of the goodness of their heart?
Reputation can matter a great deal to a billionaire and many have gone through impressive efforts to burnish theirs.
We should take their money and give it to politicans. Politics is a true uncorrupted, meritocracy where only the good rise to the top unlike capitalism
It seems fairly clear that Musk is buying Twitter so he can re-platform conservatives. Why else bother owning it? Influential people on the left will say anything, true or untrue to tank Musk's reputation. Don't get down in the weeds of the talking points, look at who controls political conversation in the US and who stands to benefit if that monopoly is broken. I am on the left, but am increasingly disturbed by the total shut-out of conservatives from social media.
Yeah those moonbats, when will they learn that exposing yourself to a flight attendant and offering her a horse in exchange for sex is actually great for the economy?
With people that thought he has done a good thing by actually turning the EV market into something other than a VW in Ed Begley's garage. By others who think he has found a way to make Space and Space Exploration a reality. I am sure he must wish Twitter had blocked his "Pedo" tweet about the divers who saved the Thai children.
That doesn't make any sense to me. Musk has done genuinely pioneering work in electric vehicles and rocketry. Things like the Boring company or Neurolink obviously haven't really panned out - but still, good areas to work in. That he also goes a bit crazy on Twitter doesn't really take away from any of that. To think less of Musk for his tweets means that you equate the latter behavior with the former, when, clearly, the former is much more consequential.
Every notable figure, and likely (almost) every person, has done things that are bad. Gandhi was a racist, Lincoln's social media squabbles led him to a duel, Edison electrocuted an elephant for entertainment or advertising, and so on. That Musk has flaws shouldn't surprise anyone or discredit him for his accomplishments.
Tesla and SpaceX have done great work. Its hard to tell exactly how influential Musk is to these companies. Perhaps a lot, perhaps only financially, perhaps just a figurehead. When his tweets are less than brilliant, your prior assumption starts to move away from brilliance and towards the idea that he's just a blowhard at the top of two great companies. Couple that with the fact that Musk makes a lot of broken promises on Twitter you can see why people think Musk's tweets detract from his reputation.
It may be coincidental that Musk is the leader of two pioneering companies. I think you'd need more evidence than not liking his tweets for that to be a reasonable conclusion though.
I mean, if his skillset was identifying, investing in and hyping great companies, that would be valuable. But that would undermine his Ironman persona that made him popular to a lot of people.
I personally don't respect him any less if he just finds and supports smart people, but for some reason others dismiss that unless they think he is personally designing rocket engines.
i wouldn't have issues with him if that's what he claimed he was doing instead of trying to pass off every engineering feat of Tesla and SpaceX as his own. but the piece of shit has made himself the stereotypical entitled executive type by taking credit for other people's work.
He's just a figurehead. SpaceX does best when Musk is absent and Shotwell is in charge. Notably, every major SpaceX failure has happened when Musk decided to come back to the facilities and meddle in the engineers' work.
i've never trusted him ever since he promoted Leap Motion as some great piece of tech. and his notion that two cheap ass cameras should be sufficient to get self driving up to par with human drivers really sealed the deal. he's a fucking idiot. maybe he gets coached by people who actually know what's going on when he does pr shit.
> Musk has done genuinely pioneering work in electric vehicles and rocketry. [...] That he also goes a bit crazy on Twitter doesn't really take away from any of that.
If you look at it from the perspective of someone who likes Musk, then he's the lynchpin of Tesla and SpaceX which are advancing humanity, every other company's EV and self-driving features are only because he lit a fire under them; and the stuff he's doing with his money is much more exciting than other billionaires like Larry Ellison.
But from the perspective of someone who doesn't like Musk, it's engineers/ scientists/ programmers doing all the real work; 90% of Musk's promises remain undelivered; and his contribution to each company is so minor he can 'lead' five companies at once and still has so much free time he wants to buy a sixth.
And if seeing him be an asshole to that diver is what changes you from one perspective to the other?...
> it's engineers/ scientists/ programmers doing all the real work
Ask the engineers of any failed companies what real work they’ve been doing?
> 90% of Musk's promises remain undelivered
He promised the hard things that are more often than not fail. He doesn’t care if he is wrong.
> his contribution to each company is so minor he can 'lead' five companies at once and still has so much free time he wants to buy a sixth.
That’s an uncharitable take. He is obviously doing a good job given how EVs are being seen today, and how dominant SpaceX has become. One may argue he isn’t afraid of challenge, and work six times as hard of other CEOs
I'm not suggesting that no one thinks lesser of Musk. I'm suggesting that there are people who also think more of Musk. I mean, even that diver tweet didn't effect him much. Still selling loads of cars. Space X still going strong. All those hardcore freedom of speech people support him.
" I am sure he must wish Twitter had blocked his "Pedo" tweet about the divers who saved the Thai children."
Regardless of the current culture, you may reject the worldview in which a few mean Tweets are a reason to destroy/forever despise a person, regardless what that person has achieved otherwise.
In fact, the more people reject this judgmental, fire-and-brimstone attitude, the better place the social networks will be.
The current standard where gangs of people try to make other people permanent social outcasts based on one or several short quips somewhere on Twitter is psychotic, North Korea style. You do not have to accept it as normal.
Everyone has their own ideas of what would save twitter or make it stop sucking.
For me:
* Let me opt out of all recommendations. I only want to see tweets of people I follow or tags I follow. Nothing else. I'll find more people to follow via the people I follow. Do not post random popular news, people, related stuff in my feed, period.
* Let me choose the types of tweets I see. Personally I want to see zero of (@person liked, @person replied to, ...)
* Remove the 280 character limit (but possibly only show the first N characters in the feed). I don't personally believe the 280 character limit is important to twitter's success. Twitter's difference from most other places is that people are talking from their account, in public. It's one giant flat public forum. It is not FB (friends and family) and it is not Reddit (moderated sub forums). That alone is it's strength. All the 280 character thing does is amplify hyperbole as there is on room for nuance.
I'm sure Musk has his own ideas (no censorship?) but as for me, I won't personally use twitter without the changes above. I have an account, I check about once a month or less. I see lots of the stuff above and quit. It's like having a pushy salesperson following you around and constantly recommending stuff. Rather than more sales I'd just leave for another store.
> * Let me choose the types of tweets I see. Personally I want to see zero of (@person liked, @person replied to, ...)
or even better make that a whitelist or blacklist option. There are some people who retweet way too much but others I'm perfectly happy to see them from.
> The term "blacklist" arose from "black book" almost 100 years prior. "Black book" does not appear to have any etymology or sources that support ties to race, instead coming from the 1400s referring "to a list of people who had committed crimes or fallen out of favor with leaders" and popularized by King Henry VIII's literal usage of a book bound in black.[16] Others also note the prevalence of positive and negative connotations to "white" and "black" in the bible, predating attributions to skin tone and slavery.[17] It wasn't until the 1960s Black Power movement that "Black" became a widespread word to refer to one's race as a person of color in America[18] (alternate to African-American) lending itself to the argument that the negative connotation behind "black" and "blacklist" both predate attribution to race.
Huh neat thanks. Wish you could do the same for lists too. Lists are nice ways to follow people you don't always want to see but still want easy access to.
The problem with Twitter isn't that it isn't efficient enough or the features aren't configured correctly. It's not that exciting to the average person and never will become popular like Facebook or TikTok.
Twitter could be described as:
1) Following influencers like on Instagram -- but no cool, sexy, beautiful pictures and very boring.
2) Infinite scrolling like TikTok -- but it's boring three word text replies instead of in your face video.
3) It has leading news stories featured at the top of the feed like Facebook -- but none of your friends are on Twitter and you can't engage them negatively or positively.
Only a certain type of person is going to spend a lot of time on Twitter. That person is a minority.
That was a study of ~3000 people. They also excluded products, institutions and international (obviously) users. Not really representative of Twitter considering a decent part of its interactions are businesses and institutions engaging with the public...
The word I'm seeing repeated here is "boring," but that also brings up a point about where Twitter works well: niche audiences.
Especially ones that aren't necessarily interested in photos or short videos you look at once then forget. Or in the amount of work it takes to make said photos and videos as an entry fee to be visible on a platform.
Journalism comes to mind, and with it, politics (of any persuasion).
The writer's side of Twitter is also very active, maybe like you'd expect - writers, of course, gravitate to the written word.
Twitter does have its audiences that other platforms don't cater to very effectively.
You can use Facebook as a flat public forum if you want to. It works fine for that (and even allows for nuance), although most users restrict most of their posts to friends.
>* Let me opt out of all recommendations. I only want to see tweets of people I follow or tags I follow. Nothing else. I'll find more people to follow via the people I follow. Do not post random popular news, people, related stuff in my feed, period.
Any third-party app will do that. I find it fascinating that people are using Twitter with anything but a paid third-party app.
People shit on Musk, but that only makes the potential for massive gains to his reputation even greater if he actually is able to turn Twitter around and make it into a respectable social network again. People like you, will eat crow.
I personally like him and what he has been trying to do. But he is not a God. I simply think this Twitter is an necessary mistake that will divert his attention from import thangs.
The person most damaging to his reputation is Musk himself. See: Sec censures, pedo guy in Thailand, harassing flight attendants, full self-driving next year.
I mean it's not like he's had any magical visions about what to do with Twitter. Everything he's said is entirely straightforward and reasonable - and presumably has been studied and researched and not found to be the best course forward.
Surely a cleaner way of doing this would be saying that he's pulling back cash to stockpile for a new moonshot idea. Then use 12-18 months to come up with something. The Twitter thing has been pretty ridiculous.
Do founders ever feel regret when they walk away from what they became known for? If you still have drive after you leave, I imagine there is a lot of pressure to reproduce your first success.
EDIT>>Removing reference to Dorsey only having one major success.
Hey, they recently redid the user interface for it!
I mean, yeah, the new interface is unusable with anything under a Xeon workstation, and it's very mobile editing focused, for a blogging platform, and it drove me and a variety of other people off Blogger entirely, but... they've not just left it alone. That would have been an improvement over what they did to it.
It's the only market where you can make a direct comparison between company X or Y and the most solid entity in the world which is the US Federal Govt. for you cannot buy stocks in Uncle Sam, only bonds.
> Square changed the game on merchant accounts with Point of Sale systems.
Business isn't politics, you have to show profits or at least huge FCF to claim that you've made it. Xerox was the game changer with GUI , BlackBerry/PocketPC with smartphones, Myspace with social media etc...yet only historians of business remember such details. Changing the game isn't the name of the game. Signing off incredible amounts of quality of life for the American consumer, that's what it's all about.
GM has a higher credit rating than Tesla… despite being a company that went bankrupt and has declining sales across the board, has lower margins lower mar cap and a much shakier forward plan and heaps more debt.
Prior default doesn't factor into default risk? There is something really wrong with rating agencies. I think you've convinced me more of my view rather than sway me. The credit scores are completely meaningless.
Why would it? it isnt a question of character. It is just assets and profit vs Debt. The same is true for individuals too. If you have enough collateral, no one gives a shit if you went bankrupt in the past.
You seem to be deeply ignorant of basic finance. Have you ever actually read a bond rating from one of the big rating agencies? They explain the metrics they use.
If you think you have found an error in bond rating procedures then put your money where your mouth is. Go long Tesla bonds and short GM bonds, and make a fortune. Be sure to lever up to maximize your returns.
However, Telsa and Twitter are likely to have credit impacts if Musk acquires Twitter because of the structure of the deal. Musk is using $62 BN of Tesla stock to finance the Twitter buyout, which increases Telsa's debt leverage, and will introduce $13 BN of new debt for Twitter. Both companies could see a drop in credit ratings, at least temporarily.
But the market is fickle, and Musk is unpredictable, so...
One example is Pavel Durov. He created VK, which became the most popular social network in Russia. It was taken over by government-aligned oligarchs. Pavel left Russia and started Telegram which became even more successful.
When you leave something you have put so much effort in, and the future doesn't look good then you feel regret. When the future looks good you are usually proud.
But no, you don't feel pressure to build it again. Because first this is a lot of work and second it is not even likely that you will succeed again at it. Especially in b2c
Snoop's Wine is on sale at Whole Foods. Took a pass. Somehow I don't think it would represent the image I was trying to convey when I cook dinner for date:)
Kind of crazy how fast this guys' reputation has been cleaned up despite being the main cause for the mess that twitter has been up until when paraga took over only a few months ago.
He said he think trump should have been let back on the platform (I'm agnostic on the matter) but he's had a year to take that action and hasn't. Point is that he's expressed remorse about several things that he easily could have made an executive decision to change but somehow hasn't. Hope does interesting stuff with crypto though.
I get the impression he felt somewhat trapped at Twitter. Between the board and the user base and the Federal government breathing down their necks, it must have been extremely difficult to actually do anything.
To be blunt about it I feel like that's a battle he could have stepped into but was too cowardly to do so. Now he's expressing remorse in hindsight about not doing so but that doesn't earn my respect.
Maybe he can do for Bitcoin what he did for the Public Square - turn it into a bunch of loud mouthed anonymous trolls that shutdown anyone that disagree with them. Wait Bitcoin already is that.
At CEO/founder level I'd imagine one could only attend so many board meetings. Consider how many boards he is a part of, it would be hard to attend each and every one, especially for public companies.
While the article doesn't mention whether he's selling his shares as a part of the exit from the board, wouldn't this be just the best time to sell his shares without significantly underming other investors? Charitably, when you are the largest individual shareholder you're kind of stuck, and this is a great time to extricate himself from risking the stock tanking everytime he needs liquidity as leverage for something else.
Not to diminish the other shenanigans afoot in this whole transition, but Dorsey leaving the board seems like the least suspicious of everything else flying around. Having founders around at this late stage is also disruptive to any new regime. It's like a royal family whose existence acts as a percieved limit on the absolute sovereignty of a government, since if there's a slim chance to appeal to them, people will act like they can at critical moments. Twitter is a thing, it's not a person or a community, and his exit hopefully will let people look at the business more objectively.
> ouldn't this be just the best time to sell his shares without significantly underming other investors?
Well, he knows Musk. And if Musk is about to purchase everyone's shares for $54.20, it would be a horrible time. So if he sells at Twitter's current price, everyone will assume he heard from Musk the acquisition is off, and the price will plummet.
Unless, of course, he sells the shares privately to Musk. It would leave Musk below the poison pill limit (I think), and the amount probably doesn't have to be disclosed then.
181 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 298 ms ] threadIn that place, the BoD is basically networking central - people get put on the board if the company thinks their connections will help the company out. I suppose they also weigh in on important decisions, but bringing along their Rolodex seems like the reason they are there (and I was assuming that is not so important when you are a $40B+ globally known company)
If you're making a SV reference, Jack Barker (Action Jack) is largely based on Jack Welch (Neutron Jack)
Delaware is actually pretty quick with court cases, a couple of months end-to-end.
Musk avoiding regulatory issues with agencies is a very different thing from incurring the wrath of a court. A judge can order jail time, fines, etc., to bring Musk into compliance with court orders.
I've made some comments where I've been confused as to why they got downvotes, but that wasn't one of them.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
This is an extremely sparse remark about a controversial issue.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Enough said.
The answer is pretty clear; here's an article in the Washington Post observing that all the complaints about Elon Musk taking over Twitter are Democrats anxious about the idea that this is bad for the Democratic Party: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/28/musk-purc...
Reputation can matter a great deal to a billionaire and many have gone through impressive efforts to burnish theirs.
Unless by far-left you really mean neoliberals.
But this case you’re citing here is unproven and seems like a political hit.
Business Insider contacted him before he made his republican vote tweet.
Why are Elon Musk haters so irrational when they make their arguments?
Every notable figure, and likely (almost) every person, has done things that are bad. Gandhi was a racist, Lincoln's social media squabbles led him to a duel, Edison electrocuted an elephant for entertainment or advertising, and so on. That Musk has flaws shouldn't surprise anyone or discredit him for his accomplishments.
I personally don't respect him any less if he just finds and supports smart people, but for some reason others dismiss that unless they think he is personally designing rocket engines.
On top of that, you'd have to treat his Twitter account as anomalous and not indicative of his day to day work because of ...some reason?
If you look at it from the perspective of someone who likes Musk, then he's the lynchpin of Tesla and SpaceX which are advancing humanity, every other company's EV and self-driving features are only because he lit a fire under them; and the stuff he's doing with his money is much more exciting than other billionaires like Larry Ellison.
But from the perspective of someone who doesn't like Musk, it's engineers/ scientists/ programmers doing all the real work; 90% of Musk's promises remain undelivered; and his contribution to each company is so minor he can 'lead' five companies at once and still has so much free time he wants to buy a sixth.
And if seeing him be an asshole to that diver is what changes you from one perspective to the other?...
Ask the engineers of any failed companies what real work they’ve been doing?
> 90% of Musk's promises remain undelivered
He promised the hard things that are more often than not fail. He doesn’t care if he is wrong.
> his contribution to each company is so minor he can 'lead' five companies at once and still has so much free time he wants to buy a sixth.
That’s an uncharitable take. He is obviously doing a good job given how EVs are being seen today, and how dominant SpaceX has become. One may argue he isn’t afraid of challenge, and work six times as hard of other CEOs
Regardless of the current culture, you may reject the worldview in which a few mean Tweets are a reason to destroy/forever despise a person, regardless what that person has achieved otherwise.
In fact, the more people reject this judgmental, fire-and-brimstone attitude, the better place the social networks will be.
The current standard where gangs of people try to make other people permanent social outcasts based on one or several short quips somewhere on Twitter is psychotic, North Korea style. You do not have to accept it as normal.
For me:
* Let me opt out of all recommendations. I only want to see tweets of people I follow or tags I follow. Nothing else. I'll find more people to follow via the people I follow. Do not post random popular news, people, related stuff in my feed, period.
* Let me choose the types of tweets I see. Personally I want to see zero of (@person liked, @person replied to, ...)
* Remove the 280 character limit (but possibly only show the first N characters in the feed). I don't personally believe the 280 character limit is important to twitter's success. Twitter's difference from most other places is that people are talking from their account, in public. It's one giant flat public forum. It is not FB (friends and family) and it is not Reddit (moderated sub forums). That alone is it's strength. All the 280 character thing does is amplify hyperbole as there is on room for nuance.
I'm sure Musk has his own ideas (no censorship?) but as for me, I won't personally use twitter without the changes above. I have an account, I check about once a month or less. I see lots of the stuff above and quit. It's like having a pushy salesperson following you around and constantly recommending stuff. Rather than more sales I'd just leave for another store.
or even better make that a whitelist or blacklist option. There are some people who retweet way too much but others I'm perfectly happy to see them from.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklist_(computing)
click the "Latest Tweets" icon at the top right of the feed.
Twitter could be described as:
1) Following influencers like on Instagram -- but no cool, sexy, beautiful pictures and very boring.
2) Infinite scrolling like TikTok -- but it's boring three word text replies instead of in your face video.
3) It has leading news stories featured at the top of the feed like Facebook -- but none of your friends are on Twitter and you can't engage them negatively or positively.
Only a certain type of person is going to spend a lot of time on Twitter. That person is a minority.
Twitter still seems pretty popular without all that extra flashy trash...
https://nypost.com/2019/04/24/twitter-doesnt-reflect-how-mos...
> About 22 percent of Americans use Twitter. And roughly 10 percent of those users are responsible for 80 percent of tweets
And ~70 million US users is not exactly nothing.
Especially ones that aren't necessarily interested in photos or short videos you look at once then forget. Or in the amount of work it takes to make said photos and videos as an entry fee to be visible on a platform.
Journalism comes to mind, and with it, politics (of any persuasion).
The writer's side of Twitter is also very active, maybe like you'd expect - writers, of course, gravitate to the written word.
Twitter does have its audiences that other platforms don't cater to very effectively.
Any third-party app will do that. I find it fascinating that people are using Twitter with anything but a paid third-party app.
I think Musk underestimates how complicated social media is.
Do founders ever feel regret when they walk away from what they became known for? If you still have drive after you leave, I imagine there is a lot of pressure to reproduce your first success.
EDIT>>Removing reference to Dorsey only having one major success.
I mean, yeah, the new interface is unusable with anything under a Xeon workstation, and it's very mobile editing focused, for a blogging platform, and it drove me and a variety of other people off Blogger entirely, but... they've not just left it alone. That would have been an improvement over what they did to it.
My extensive thoughts on their "improvements" here: https://www.sevarg.net/2020/10/10/end-of-blog-new-blogger-in...
Which is now a Jekyll based blog, hosted on my own hardware.
I also don't care about the stock price
What is the credit rating of Block, Twitter and Square? D- ? DD- ?
Square changed the game on merchant accounts with Point of Sale systems.
It's the only market where you can make a direct comparison between company X or Y and the most solid entity in the world which is the US Federal Govt. for you cannot buy stocks in Uncle Sam, only bonds.
> Square changed the game on merchant accounts with Point of Sale systems.
Business isn't politics, you have to show profits or at least huge FCF to claim that you've made it. Xerox was the game changer with GUI , BlackBerry/PocketPC with smartphones, Myspace with social media etc...yet only historians of business remember such details. Changing the game isn't the name of the game. Signing off incredible amounts of quality of life for the American consumer, that's what it's all about.
So what are you talking about?
GM has a debt ratio of 1.7 compared with Tesla (the high growth new comer) of 0.9.
You put ANY metric between Tesla and GM that could justify GM having a higher credit rating. It’s ridiculous.
If you think you have found an error in bond rating procedures then put your money where your mouth is. Go long Tesla bonds and short GM bonds, and make a fortune. Be sure to lever up to maximize your returns.
Easy to call someone ignorant, but how about you show it.
Twitter: Ba2
Telsa: A-AAA depending on the debt type
However, Telsa and Twitter are likely to have credit impacts if Musk acquires Twitter because of the structure of the deal. Musk is using $62 BN of Tesla stock to finance the Twitter buyout, which increases Telsa's debt leverage, and will introduce $13 BN of new debt for Twitter. Both companies could see a drop in credit ratings, at least temporarily.
But the market is fickle, and Musk is unpredictable, so...
Sources:
https://www.fitchratings.com/entity/square-inc-97197931
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitter-credit-faces-a-mul...
https://www.fitchratings.com/search?query=tesla
But no, you don't feel pressure to build it again. Because first this is a lot of work and second it is not even likely that you will succeed again at it. Especially in b2c
Not to diminish the other shenanigans afoot in this whole transition, but Dorsey leaving the board seems like the least suspicious of everything else flying around. Having founders around at this late stage is also disruptive to any new regime. It's like a royal family whose existence acts as a percieved limit on the absolute sovereignty of a government, since if there's a slim chance to appeal to them, people will act like they can at critical moments. Twitter is a thing, it's not a person or a community, and his exit hopefully will let people look at the business more objectively.
Well, he knows Musk. And if Musk is about to purchase everyone's shares for $54.20, it would be a horrible time. So if he sells at Twitter's current price, everyone will assume he heard from Musk the acquisition is off, and the price will plummet.
Unless, of course, he sells the shares privately to Musk. It would leave Musk below the poison pill limit (I think), and the amount probably doesn't have to be disclosed then.
>Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first announced the Bluesky initiative in 2019 on Twitter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)