Twitter, the social media company recently bough by Elon Musk, is suffering a new devaluation by asset managing firm Fidelity, according to the Wall Street Journal. While the company is no longer on the stock market since Elon Musk acquired a majority share, minority shareholders like Fidelity still assess the value and estimate it at $15 billion, compared to the $44 billion that Musk paid.
Elon Musk’s takeover in October 2022 resulted in a huge company shakeup. Musk laid off much of the staff and instituted a reversal to the previous work from home policy. The core of employees retained managed to keep the platform running while cutting down on useless expenses, though new features were difficult to roll out smoothly with a skeleton staff. Musk has oriented the company towards turning a profit, charging $8/month for individuals to acquire a blue check mark, and $1,000/month for companies to receive a gold checkmark.
Musk’s long-term prospects for Twitter are not certain yet. He renamed the holding company as “X”, claiming that Twitter would be the core of a new “everything app”, sometimes labeled as an American version of the Chinese “WeChat” app. Musk’s relaxing of Twitter censorship, as well as adding “community notes” fact checking media claims, have been welcome changes to many conservative activists.
Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022
