“We are not Twitter any longer and not measuring ourselves by old Twitter metrics.”
FKA Twitter
The site formerly known as Twitter continues to lose ad revenue hand over fist under Elon Musk’s ownership, making the differences between “X” and “Twitter” all the more apparent.
“We are not Twitter any longer and not measuring ourselves by old Twitter metrics — both in revenue and user metrics,” Joe Benarroch, X’s head of business operations, told Bloomberg when asked about the massive, continuing ad revenue drop since Musk took over.
According to Bloomberg‘s insider sources, the company is projected to bring in about $2.5 billion in ad revenue for this year — a “significant slump” compared to the past two years.
Indeed, the platform’s 2021 revenue reporting indicated that it brought in a whopping $4.5 billion in ad dollars in 2021. We don’t have solid numbers for last year because the company stopped publicly sharing its financials after Musk took it private in October 2022, but the company reported $2.18 billion in ad revenue in the first six months of that year alone.
All told, the site is projected to bring in $3.4 billion total revenue in 2023, per Bloomberg, which includes subscription sales and licensing deals. Considering that it made more than $5 billion in 2021 and that former CEO Jack Dorsey set a public goal to reach $7.5 billion by the end of 2023 — you know, before he dipped out and the site got sold to Musk — these projections really drive home how far the site has fallen in just a few years.
Mighty Fall
In many ways, it’s hard not to see Musk’s chaotic ownership of the social network as anything but a cautionary tale. Before 2022 was even over, the veritable exodus of spooked advertisers had already begun. Little did we know, things were going to get much, much worse.
Things took a turn for the worse last month when the South African-born business magnate really put his foot in it by agreeing with a gross antisemitic conspiracy theory that he referred to as “the actual truth” on X.
Musk also infamously told advertisers to go “fuck” themselves last month after major brands including Apple and Disney pulled out of advertising on the platform following Musk’s antisemitic tweet.
In short, it’s a sorry state of affairs. Maybe its executives are right to differentiate it from Twitter after all, considering that the hellsite we all used to love to hate is now a shell of its former self.
More on X/Twitter/whatever: Elon Musk Says CEO of Disney Should Be Fired, Seemingly for Hurting His Feelings
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