<\/p>\n
Elon Musk\u2019s social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), is worth less than half of what the tech billionaire bought it for in October last year, an internal memo has reportedly revealed.<\/p>\n
According to an Oct. 30 report<\/a> from Bloomberg, the internal memo and sources familiar with the matter said that restricted stock units recently paid to employees of the company were valued at $45 a share, which puts the company\u2019s value at around $19 billion, less than half of the $44 billion that Musk paid for the company on Oct. 27, 2022. <\/p>\n Musk has made a series of controversial moves since taking over the platform, including rebranding it to X<\/a>, changing many of its content rules<\/a> and laying off approximately 80%<\/a> of the company\u2019s workforce.<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s drastic changes, along with his outspoken presence on the platform also appears to have made his company less popular with advertisers, with Bloomberg estimating<\/a> that X has now lost at least half of its total advertising revenue. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the significant drop in revenue has made the servicing of Musk\u2019s debt worrisome for the firm as a whole. As of the time of publication, X reportedly owes around $1.2 billion in interest payments on its roughly $13 billion in total debt. <\/p>\n Musk has made it clear that he wants to rely more heavily on paid user subscriptions, but as of right now, less than 1% of the platform’s total user base has decided<\/a> to fork over money for a premium subscription \u2014 which equates to less than $120 million in annual revenue.<\/p>\n Cointelegraph contacted X for comment but did not receive an immediate response.<\/p>\n Related: <\/em><\/strong>Elon Musk says posts busted by Community Notes won\u2019t earn revenue share<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n On the other hand, some have seen benefits to Elon Musk\u2019s tenure at the company. <\/p>\n One of the popular additions to the platform under Musk has been paying individual creators<\/a> for their engagement by way of revenue-sharing payments.<\/p>\n Recently, Musk announced that any posts corrected by the Community Notes feature would become \u201cineligible for revenue share\u201d \u2014 a move that seeks to prioritize accurate information over the purely viral, and potentially inaccurate content.<\/p>\n Making a slight change to creator monetization: <\/p>\n Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes<\/a> become ineligible for revenue share.<\/p>\n The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.<\/p>\n \u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile,Musk has repeated on numerous occasions that he means to turn X into an \u201ceverything app<\/a>\u201d \u2014 largely inspired by the super apps popular in Asia such as WeChat \u2014 which would see the social media platform expand to include a range of financial services, video calls and other lifestyle use cases. <\/p>\n There are also hopes that X would integrate cryptocurrency<\/a> in some way in the future.<\/p>\n\n