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shillyshally t1_iuvhcp5 wrote

$8 a month is chicken feed to blue check people. However, Twitter ad revenue is generated by eyes on Twitter content so blue checks may bristle at being charged for supplying the content that brings attention to the ads. Stephen King has already said as much.

"Last year, Twitter’s interest expense was about $50 million. With the new debt taken on in the deal, that will now balloon to about $1 billion a year. Yet the company’s operations last year generated about $630 million in cash flow to meet its financial obligations."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twitter-debt.html

The most quoted number of users is around 350M. If each of those users paid $1 a month, that would generate $42B in revenue. But! 10% of the users generate mostly all the content so it would be more likely that 35M users would pay $1 a month and that would only generate $420M. So far, Twitter has lost money except for, I think, two quarters so even with the added user revenue Twitter could not make enough to pay the interest on his loans.

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CremeImportant2347 t1_iuw4o7h wrote

I like your analysis.

I think you bring up a good point that content creators aren’t going to be cool with the concept of paying for the privilege of making Twitter $.

Long term Twitter is going to need to come up with a model that allows content creators to share in the revenue they generate for the platform similar to YouTube. People don’t work for free and if they do then you get what you pay for…

Your math regarding servicing debt is also valid, but let’s examine your conclusion. $1.05 billion in debt service annually minus $630 million in pre-sale cash flow equals $420 million needed to service the new debt. At $1 per month you estimate additional revenue of $420 million. So the math does pencil out…

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shillyshally t1_iuwdet8 wrote

I don't math. I used $1 becasue I figured that is what the average person would pay. I'm average and I pay $3 a month to Amazon to keep videos of all the critters visiting my yard at night.

The other thing that could happen is all the ex-Twitter employees found - with some billionaire backing them - a new Twitter. Peeper is probably a no go as far as names go as is Twatter (Except maybe in Australia). Maybe Cheeper since we are all poor these days. Or Quacker for the MAGA anti-vax folks.

As part of a rebranding, Musk could rename Twitter to Blather or Blither or BlitherBlather.

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