New Delhi, 16th July 2023: Twitter Owner and former CEO Elon Musk stated that the company is still losing money due to its high debt load and a 50% decline in advertising revenue.
The social media platform will “need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” Musk stated in a tweet. Separately, following user complaints, the billionaire revealed late Saturday that the site will raise the number of tweets verified accounts may see each day by 50%.
Several major advertisers halted spending on the site when Musk purchased it last year, citing fears about changes the billionaire would make. Earlier this year, Musk stated that many of the advertisers who had gone had returned, and that the company was on its way to becoming cash-flow positive.
Musk had previously stated in a Tweet, “Almost all of them have either come back or said they’re coming back.”
Advertiser spending fell 89% to $7.6 million over a two-month period in early this year, according to Sensor Tower figures. Prior to Musk’s takeover, the top ten advertisers spent $71 million on advertising from September to October 2022.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., launched his own Twitter competitor, Threads, this month, which quickly surpassed 100 million subscribers in the days following its introduction. Some lawmakers have switched to the alternative platform but are still hesitant to commit to it.
Twitter prompted a user reaction days before the debut of Threads when it imposed a temporary limit on the amount of tweets that accounts can see per day. The restriction was initially set at 600 unverified users and 6,000 verified accounts, before being increased to 1,000 and 10,000, respectively.
The most recent increase suggests that authenticated users will now be able to access 15,000 posts, though Musk did not elaborate.
Musk paid $44 billion for the social media firm in late October 2022. Since then, he has made various adjustments to the product and company structure, many of which he credits with lowering the company’s cash burn and debt burden.
Following the transaction, the company laid off thousands of people. Among other improvements, Musk announced Twitter Blue, which allows users to authenticate their identity for $8 per month, as well as new opportunities for users to monetise their material.
