In early November last year, following his acquisition of social media giant Twitter, Elon Musk said the company was losing upwards of $4 million a day, a reality that prompted him to make drastic cuts to the company’s employee pool, laying off thousands.
However, according to a recent tweet by the tech mogul, the company is now “trending to breakeven [sic].”
“Last 3 months were extremely tough, as had to save Twitter from bankruptcy, while fulfilling essential Tesla & SpaceX duties. Wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone,” Musk Tweeted, adding that, “Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending to breakeven if we keep at it. Public support is much appreciated!”
Musk acquired the social media platform in a $44 billion deal last October that he appeared to attempt to get out of by lodging accusations at Twitter’s former ownership alleging they were not transparent over the number of bot accounts on the platform.
Musk’s tweet was in response to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article that mused about the state of his health, his extreme workload and lack of sleep.
Success
You are now signed up for our newsletter
Success
Check your email to complete sign up
“I had trouble sleeping last night, so unfortunately, I’m not at my best” Musk said during a trial in San Francisco last week, adding that, “I’m sorry for squirming around. I have quite severe back pain.”
Apparently, Musk spends many nights sleeping at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco where he has reportedly refurbished areas of the office space into makeshift bedrooms for him and his employees.
Following a Twitter poll in December last year, Musk said he would resign as CEO as soon as he found someone “foolish enough to take the job!”
READ MORE:
- Elon Musk Defends Himself Against Lawsuit Over Allegedly Misleading ‘Funding’ Tweet
- Musk Says He Had ‘Major Side Effects’ From COVID Booster Required for Travel to Berlin Tesla Factory
- Project Veritas Uncovers Why YouTube Censored Pfizer Video Alleging Gain-of-function COVID Research
An ‘everything’ app
In November last year, shortly after his acquisition, Musk said he had “no choice” but to implement mass layoffs, cutting approximately 4,400 contract employees out of 5,500, leaving the platform to operate on a skeleton crew.
Despite the cuts many say that the platform is operating better than ever and according to Musk new signups surged after his purchase, prompting him to forecast that the platform will be home to a billion users by 2024.
“Signups were averaging over two million per day in the last seven days as of Nov. 16, up 66% compared to the same week in 2021,” Musk said at the time according to Reuters.
In a tweet in early October last year, Musk said that his purchase of the platform is “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”
The vision is to create an app that directly competes with numerous other platforms currently in the wild, including TikTok, and would operate similarly to the popular Chinese super-app, WeChat.
Recently, Twitter began applying for a series of licenses that would allow the platform to process payments, a feature offered by WeChat, and Musk has discussed plans to allow Twitter to host longer-form videos.
WeChat offers users everything from messaging and video chatting to video games, photo sharing, ride services, food delivery, shopping and even banking.
“If you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat,” Musk said according to Business Insider. “It does everything — sort of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things, and all rolled into one, with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app, and we don’t have anything like that outside of China,” he added.
During a townhall event last year, the billionaire said there is a “real opportunity” to create a similar app to WeChat.
“I think if we could achieve that, or even close to that with Twitter, it would be an immense success,” he said.
