I have not said much on Elon/Twitter because I don’t think it will matter.

My gut feeling is Twitter for the next couple of years is cooked. If Twitter still had stock, it would be shorted heavily. Heck, it sounds like Tesla is being shorted by proxy.

Twitter’s willingness to moderate and block (some) hate in the past was not because they cared. Companies with big advertising budgets ultimately do not want their ads showing up on pages filled with hate. It is terrible business.

Elon is on a mission to make Twitter profitable. On this, I am fully aligned with him. However, trying to squeeze money out of your existing customers without offering new value will not work.

What could Twitter add that your average power user would find rewarding enough that they would pay? I have no clue. They could add more ads, but ads are easy to scroll by; I do not think that would move the needle. I pay for YouTube to avoid ads, but those ads consistently cost me 15 to 30 seconds of my time (and my family’s).

I do not see the path forward for Elon. Microsoft (as well as Amazon, Google, and Apple) could absorb the cost of running Twitter and use it as an asset for much of its business. This is why I speculated someone like Microsoft will eventually swoop in a purchase it for a significant discount.