“The last 4 months have been difficult”

Musk is also known as the owner of the car company Tesla and the space company SpaceX. Adrien Fillon

The billionaire who bought the social media service Twitter Elon Musk admits that the last 4 months have been difficult in terms of service results. The billionaire told about it on the broadcast of the Morgan Stanley conference on Tuesday. An online publication reported on the matter Business Insider.

The company’s advertising revenue has fallen since Musk bought the service in October for $44 billion. According to him, the seasonal nature of the business and various political reasons have contributed to the decrease in advertising revenue.

Iltalehti reported in December that advertising revenue had fallen 80 percent below expectations. Back then, Twitter did loss of 4 million dollars per day.

According to Musk, the service currently generates 5–6 cents per hour per user. The billionaire states that the aim is to modify the ads to be more useful for users, which could increase the income to 15–20 cents per hour. According to him, users spend a total of 130 million hours a day on the service.

Can the cuts save Twitter?

The losses force Twitter to cut costs. However, the billionaire is optimistic about the situation. He expects the result to turn upward with the changes.

Musk stated on Tuesday that Twitter’s non-debt expenses would be cut by $3 billion this year. He states that the primary means are cutting the costs of cloud services by 40 percent and closing one data center.

The company’s results are no longer public. After the change of ownership in October, Twitter left the stock exchange and is now a private company.

Before the change of ownership Twitter said in its interim report 2% increase in advertising revenue. Advertising revenue at the time was $1.18 billion.

To compensate for the losses, Twitter offers its users Twitter Blue feature where the user can purchase a certification mark for a monthly fee of $8. American CNN reported the feature caused an increase in the number of verified fake accounts in the service.

With the change of ownership, Musk fired 7,500 Twitter employees, with the aim of improving the company’s profitability.

Musk’s management style is criticized

Twitter has been in the headlines recently for many controversies. The company has been criticized for, among other things, freezing the accounts of journalists and interfering with freedom of speech.

The billionaire is known for his sensitive skin when he is the subject of criticism. As the owner of social media, he is actively sought to silence persons criticizing him. According to his own words, Musk considers himself a “freedom of speech absolutist”.

American magazine According to Time many fear that hate speech and disinformation will gain more acceptance under Musk’s leadership style, which could destabilize a democratic society.

The owner himself is also shared misinformation on his platformbut deleted his Tweet later.

Users are of the opinion that Musk should have resigned from the director’s duties. The billionaire has also stated that he will leave the position after finding “someone stupid enough” to replace him. Economic magazine According to Bloomberg this could happen by the end of 2023.

Earlier this week, Musk made headlines after publicly mocking a Twitter employee suffering from the disease.