I mean, I'm sure there's an element of truth to that, but I also wonder whether post-Musk Twitter is just on a different footing and trajectory than public Twitter. Public Twitter had to concern itself with Twitter's competitive position among the other tech media giants. It made sense for them to be doing a bunch of research projects, AI, AI ethics, moonshot platform projects, and product launches that might not pay off for 4+ years but also served as competitive hedges against, I don't know, TikTok or Substack or whatever.
Post-Musk Twitter can't really afford to do any of that stuff, at least not on spec. They're running (I think by necessity?) a classic private equity playbook here: figure out the core revenue drivers and strip out everything that isn't directly associated with them. Bring costs sharply down, wait for revenue to stabilize, pay off the loans, and then figure out what to do with a much more "efficient" company?
All this just to say: I'm sure they probably did grow Twitter too big. But even accounting for that, private Twitter just has different needs than public Twitter, right?
(The layoffs appear to have been done cruelly and capriciously.)
Post-Musk Twitter can't really afford to do any of that stuff, at least not on spec. They're running (I think by necessity?) a classic private equity playbook here: figure out the core revenue drivers and strip out everything that isn't directly associated with them. Bring costs sharply down, wait for revenue to stabilize, pay off the loans, and then figure out what to do with a much more "efficient" company?
All this just to say: I'm sure they probably did grow Twitter too big. But even accounting for that, private Twitter just has different needs than public Twitter, right?
(The layoffs appear to have been done cruelly and capriciously.)