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      Twitter US ad sales plunged 59% and internal forecasts are grim, NYT reports

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 3 days ago - 16:35 · 1 minute

    Twitter logo is seen on a laptop screen and a smartphone screen.

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Christopher Furlong )

    Twitter's US advertising revenue plunged 59 percent year-over-year during a recent five-week period, The New York Times reported today. The firm's US ad "revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times."

    Owner Elon Musk said in an April BBC interview that "I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back." But internal projections are grim, according to the NYT report. One internal forecast cited by the NYT predicted that Twitter's US ad revenue in June "will be down at least 56 percent each week compared with a year ago."

    Twitter "has regularly fallen short of its US weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent," and that "performance is unlikely to improve anytime soon, according to the documents and seven current and former Twitter employees," the NYT reported. "Twitter's ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said."

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      Elon Musk’s brain implant company is approved for human testing. How alarmed should we be?

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 4 days ago - 14:00

    The billionaire’s record has raised concerns over Neuralink’s ability to responsibly oversee the development of such an invasive device

    Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink last week received regulatory approval to conduct the first clinical trial of its experimental device in humans. But the billionaire executive’s bombastic promotion of the technology, his leadership record at other companies and animal welfare concerns relating to Neuralink experiments have raised alarm.

    “I was surprised,” said Laura Cabrera, a neuroethicist at Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute about the decision by the US Food and Drug Administration to let the company go ahead with clinical trials.

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      Elon Musk accused of insider trading in Dogecoin lawsuit

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 6 days ago - 00:08

    Investors claim Tesla chief used Twitter, paid influencers and his TV appearance to manipulate price of cryptocurrency

    Elon Musk is being accused of insider trading in a proposed class action lawsuit by investors. They say the Tesla CEO manipulated the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, costing them billions of dollars.

    In a Wednesday night filing in Manhattan federal court, investors said Musk used Twitter posts, paid online influencers, his 2021 appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live and other “publicity stunts” to trade profitably at their expense through several Dogecoin wallets that he or Tesla controls.

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      Twitter and Tesla’s interests at odds in Elon Musk’s quiet China visit

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 7 days ago - 16:31

    The world’s richest person lapsed into an unusual silence on social media during his trip to the electric carmaker’s second largest market

    Followers of Elon Musk didn’t know what to expect from his trip to China. Would he speak about Tesla, a company with a large market and manufacturing footprint there? Or SpaceX, with its symbiotic relationship with the American state? Or even Twitter, the social network he bought because “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”?

    The one thing no one expected: silence.

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      Elon Musk reclaims title of world’s richest person

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 7 days ago - 16:06

    Maverick head of Tesla and Twitter overtakes French billionaire Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH luxury goods empire

    Elon Musk is once again the world’s richest person after leapfrogging French billionaire Bernard Arnault, after a slump in the value of Arnault’s LVMH luxury goods empire.

    The 51-year-old maverick head of Tesla and owner of Twitter has seen his fortune recover to $192bn (£153bn) – up $55bn from the start of the year – while Arnault’s wealth has fallen by $5bn in the past 24 hours to $187bn according to Bloomberg’s daily updated billionaires’ index .

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      Twitter’s value down two-thirds since Musk takeover, says investor

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 31 May - 16:55

    Asset manager Fidelity reports that stake worth $20m in October 2022 is now worth just under $6.6m

    Twitter’s value has plummeted by almost two-thirds since Elon Musk acquired the company in October 2022, one of the social media company’s only remaining external investors has admitted.

    Fidelity, an asset manager that held a stake in Twitter worth about $20m after Musk acquired the business for $44bn, said in a corporate filing that its stake was now worth just under $6.6m. That would value the overall company, now officially called X Holdings Corp after Musk’s early venture X.com, at just $14.75bn.

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      Twitter value keeps falling under Musk, now worth a third of what he paid

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 31 May - 15:58

    Elon Musk's Twitter profile displayed on a phone screen in front of a Twitter logo and a fake stock graph with an arrow pointing down.

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

    Twitter's value has reportedly dropped to about $15 billion, slightly more than one-third of the $44 billion that Elon Musk paid for it in late October 2022. The $15 billion valuation is based on Fidelity's latest analysis of its stake in the company.

    "Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund's stake in Twitter was valued at $6.6 million as of April 28, according to the fund's monthly disclosure released Sunday," The Wall Street Journal wrote today . "That is down from about $19.7 million at the end of October, shortly after Musk's takeover, and the third time Fidelity has marked down the value of its Twitter stake, public disclosures show."

    Fidelity's new calculation "puts Twitter's overall valuation at about $15 billion, or roughly a third of the deal price," the WSJ wrote. Twitter is identified in the Fidelity filing as X Holdings, the Musk-owned holding company that owns X Corp., which merged with Twitter . Fidelity's new valuation of Twitter was previously reported by Bloomberg .

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