Elon Musk suffers major setback as Twitter’s US revenue drops 59 per cent since takeover

Must read

In a major setback to Elon Musk, Twitter’s US revenue has witnessed a massive slump of 59 per cent since he took over the company last year. Internal presentations circulating in media showed that Twitter’s revenue for the period between April 1 and the first week of May had dropped to $88 million, a 59 per cent drop compared to the same period last year.

This comes even as Elon Musk claimed earlier that all advertisers had come back to the platform after initial concerns over content moderation and hate speech. Internal reports also show that the company has regularly missed its US sales targets over the past few months, sometimes by even 30 per cent.

Concerns over content moderation on Twitter

According to some Twitter employees, advertisers in the US could be abandoning the platform over the rise of pornographic and hate speech content on the platform. According to media reports, high-profile companies including Chevrolet, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Ford, and Jeep have halted advertising on the site. In November, a report emerged which claimed that almost half of the company’s top 100 advertisers who spent more than $2 billion on Twitter ads since the beginning of 2020, had halted their campaigns on Twitter.

Watch: Elon Musk launches new AI start up

However, Musk claimed in April this year that Twitter “could be profitable” as “almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back”. But that appears unlikely in the near future, fretted some Twitter employees.

Twitter Blue subscription model in tatters

Although Elon Musk, in an attempt to shore up Twitter’s revenue, has introduced paid features like Twitter Blue on the social media platform, a report in early May revealed that more than half of Twitter Blue’s earliest subscribers were not showing interest in renewing the subscription. According to a Mashable report, out of about 150,000 early Twitter Blue subscribers, “just around 68,157 have stuck around and maintained a paid subscription as of April 30”.

Earlier on April 20, chaos erupted at Twitter as the Elon Musk-led company removed all legacy blue ticks on the platform and rolled out its paid subscription model officially.

Twitter roping in new senior executives

The latest damning report regarding plummeting Twitter revenues comes as Elon Musk hired senior NBCUniversal executive Joe Benarroch to boost the company’s business operations. The appointment of Benarroch comes within a month of Musk announcing NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new chief executive. At that time, it was revealed that she will assume her role at the company within six weeks. 

 

Source link

More articles

- Advertisement -

Startup

- Advertisement -

Latest article