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Whatever else he might lack, Elon Musk certainly does not go wanting when it comes to an out-of-the-box line of thinking, and it is this innate receptiveness to new ideas that is evident from a recent tweet by the CEO of Twitter and Tesla.
NEWS: Twitter may create a dating app. A LinkedIn competitor too 👀 pic.twitter.com/mzcX2jBDn5
— T(w)itter Daily News (@TitterDaily) May 10, 2023
As per the screenshots captured by the account @TitterDaily, a user recently interacted with Elon Musk on the topic of population collapse, urging the world’s richest person to launch a Twitter dating app to “save humanity from extinction.” The user also proposed the establishment of a LinkedIn alternative. To this, Musk replied with a one-liner:
“Interesting idea, maybe jobs too.”
Should these ideas come to fruition, they would add lucrative sources of revenue to Twitter’s scarce repertoire. For reference, Tinder earned $1.79 billion in direct revenue, while Match earned a full-year revenue of $3.18 billion in 2022. Twitter is slated to earn just $3 billion in revenue this year.
We’re back. pic.twitter.com/sG5t9gr60O
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 9, 2023
In another coup de grâce of sorts, the famous – or infamous, depending on one’s political inclinations – former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, has just announced a brand-new show to be streamed exclusively on Twitter. Bear in mind that Carlson’s Fox News show averaged 3.2 million viewers in the first quarter of 2023, constituting a veritable force to be reckoned with when it came to attracting the eyeballs.
$TWTR CEO Musk: Coming soon there will be voice and video chat function on Twitter (Twitter Inc)
- Release of encrypted DMs V1.0 should happen on May 10th
(More at https://t.co/cPbjZmerAM)— TradeTheNews.com (@Trade_The_News) May 10, 2023
While Tucker Carlson will likely prove to be an important bulwark in Elon Musk’s relentless quest to promote content creators on Twitter, and a possible dating site would add to the platform’s coffers a few years down the road, the current situation at the global town square remains in a state of flux, precariously perched between Musk’s aggressive cost-cutting measures and the general insouciance of major advertisers toward the platform.
As we reported last week, Twitter’s headcount is now down to just around 1,000 employees, constituting an 87 percent plunge relative to the October 2022 levels. This is the lowest headcount at Twitter since at least 2011 when only around 400 employees worked on the company’s payroll.
On the revenue side, Twitter now has around 250 million Daily Active Users (DAUs), constituting an increase of 2.46 percent relative to the 244 million DAUs that Twitter boasted of just six months back. However, this increase in engagement is not generating sizable marginal revenue for the platform given the fact that 37 of the platform’s 100 biggest advertisers did not spend even a single dollar on Twitter in Q1 2023, with another 24 advertisers in this august cohort curtailing their ad spend on the platform by around 80 percent. Moreover, the Twitter Blue initiative managed to generate just $11 million in revenue in the first three months of its launch.
Even so, Twitter is expected to become cash flow positive this quarter. Whether it would be able to continue this cash-generating binge is another matter entirely.
