Elon Musk reveals Twitter lost 50% of advertising revenue after he took over

Elon Musk revealed over the weekend that Twitter isn't in a position to perform "luxury" moves as the company is still suffering from a tragic loss in advertising revenue.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk followed through with the acquisition to purchase Twitter in October 2022, and shortly after the Tesla CEO brought in a sink into Twitter HQ in San Francisco to "let that sink in", the platform began losing multiple advertisers, which was the large majority of Twitter's total revenue. This loss in advertising expenditure on Twitter can be attributed to Musk's intention to widen the content guidelines on the platform, pushing for what Musk described as a more freedom-of-speech-centered approach.

These changes, which Musk carried out, ran waves of uncertainty through advertisers as these companies feared their ads would appear alongside inappropriate content. The mass departure of advertisers from the platform resulted in Musk issuing company-wide cost-reduction strategies, which resulted in laying off thousands of employees. Now, many months later, Musk has replied to a Bloomberg finance reporter suggesting that Twitter make some major changes to how it's structured behind the scenes.

"We're still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else," writes Musk

Furthermore, Musk has stepped slightly away from Twitter in terms of management as Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino, former ad chief at Comcast's NBCUniversal, as Twitter's new CEO.