I am not sure how 2022 was for you, but it has been a tough year for the world’s former richest man Elon Musk. He bought Twitter for $44 billion, but some analysts estimate it to be worth only $15 billion at best. Given the disastrous few months it has had, even that valuation looks generous. Twitter is a money pit; last year, it posted a net loss of $221 million.
All the drama has had a contagion effect on Musk’s other businesses. His car company Tesla is down 50% this year. In my view, at a market cap of $469 billion, Tesla is still dramatically overvalued. At the start of the year Tesla was valued at more than the top ten car manufacturers combined, which is obviously bonkers. Toyota for example sold over 10 million cars last year, for Tesla it was less than 1 million.
Tesla does have some nice technology, but it is not as if other manufacturers are going to sit back and let them eat their market share. Hyundai/Kia group in particular, has produced some very impressive electrical cars recently.
All in all, they estimate Elon has taken a $100 billion hit to his worth this year, ouch. The amounts are so staggering, it is hard to get your head around them. Still, he is worth $181 billion so I don’t think he will be signing on anything soon…
The real tragedy is what good you could have done with such wealth. $100 billion would go a long to help many of the problems of the world.
If you are looking for alternatives to Twitter, the competition is not great so far. Mastodon is far too complex, it is the Linux of the social media world. Post.news is interesting, but it is a bit dull so far. I predict Elon is growing tired of Twitter already and will appoint someone else as CEO.
For a good overview of the challenge of running Twitter, Welcome to hell, Elon is an entertaining read.
Mo Money, Mo Problems…
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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