£40,000,000,000

[Leothebear]

Approximately what Elon Musk paid for Twitter.

You could do quite a lot of good with £40 billion. Would you have spent it on Twitter? If not, what?

[swill453]

Is this from a position of having "only" £40,000,000,000 and spending it all? Or having lots more* and deciding where to spend £40,000,000,000?

* - well not as much as it was a few months ago...

Scott.

[dealtn]

The sellers now have exactly that opportunity. What "good" will they be doing with their £40bn?

[XFool]

Approximately what Elon Musk paid for Twitter.

You could do quite a lot of good with £40 billion. Would you have spent it on Twitter? If not, what?

Filling in a "black hole" ?

[Leothebear]

The sellers now have exactly that opportunity. What "good" will they be doing with their £40bn?

AFAIAC it's the same question, apart from the fact that I didn't mention "good".

[DrFfybes]

Firstley, hire mercenaries to kidnap Trump and Putin and make them bikini wrestle in a jelly filled paddling pool (Frankie - you have a lot to answer for) on Youtube. Actually, that would probably be self funding.

Then I'd buy every Chrysler PT cruiser in existance and have it crushed.

After that, probably a lot of charity work and motorsport sponsorship.

Paul

[Leothebear]

The sellers now have exactly that opportunity. What "good" will they be doing with their £40bn?

AFAIAC it's the same question, apart from the fact that I didn't mention "good".

Ooops I did - didn't I.

[Dod101]

£40,000,000,000 would almost cover Jeremy Hunt's fiscal deficit

Dod

[monabri]

I'd fund a group and call it

"Just Use Oil!"

[doolally]

For $40b, Musk could have bought a load of Tesla shares
doolally

[Lanark]

I remember Microsoft paid $manybillions for Skype and some wise ass on the telly pointed out that he got it for nothing from their app store.

There are strong rumours that the $8 billion purchase was largely funded by the NSA, Microsoft then pivoted the product into MS Teams to allow more covert monitoring. Skype was fully decentralised and so very hard to track.
This added billions to the value of MSFT and cost them next to nothing.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

Approximately what Elon Musk paid for Twitter.

You could do quite a lot of good with £40 billion. Would you have spent it on Twitter? If not, what?

I've cogitated this question myself. Why would anyone pay that sort of money for an advertising distributor that's losing money?

I would certainly not have spent £40bn on Twitter, if I had that sort of change floating around in my back pocket. I'd be looking more at power produced by wind, albeit I'm not sure that's got decent margins?

AiY(D)

[UncleEbenezer]

I'd be looking more at power produced by wind,
AiY(D)

You'd've bought Snorvey? (sorry, couldn't resist, after his post up-thread).

If you're after directly Doing Good, wind power should be way down your list: it's got plenty of investment going in already. Tidal power could make better use of it. Or if you're feeling more speculative, R&D into wave power or nuclear fusion are others that spring to mind.

And you'd get altogether more bang for your buck investing in energy efficiency. Or - if you could make it work - birth control in those countries with high birth rates and all the associated problems of conflict, poverty, and emigration.

[Hallucigenia]

Approximately what Elon Musk paid for Twitter.

You could do quite a lot of good with £40 billion. Would you have spent it on Twitter? If not, what?

Well a lot of that £40bn isn't Musk's money - it's come from banks and investors who are looking for a return on their money (and who currently have their heads in their hands as far as Twitter goes, but are hoping that maybe they make it back on having an early entry into Musk's next venture).

The issue I see with Twitter is that any teenage dweeb in his bedroom could probably design a Twitter (and I believe their are a number of alternatives now).

That's rather missing the point - that's like saying Murdoch is an idiot because a kid in his bedroom could replicate The Times or the Sun with MS Word and a laser printer. Aside from the fact that the technology is quite a lot more complex than that, what you're really buying is the network of people who are accustomed to using it, and the ability to influence them. For better or worse, Twitter is "sticky" and it's become the place where journalists congregate and where news is broken. And that means that whoever controls the Twitter algorithms and user policy has power, in the same way that Murdoch and the Barclays have power over traditional newspapers.

And when you've got more money than you could ever spend, what do people want? Power. Just see Mike Bloomberg and Trump for examples. You already have Musk sucking up to the right in the US, and you can imagine that control of Twitter gives him a useful bargaining chip with the Chinese authorities (Tesla is huge in China, they have nearly 20% of the EV market there)

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I'd be looking more at power produced by wind,
AiY(D)

You'd've bought Snorvey? (sorry, couldn't resist, after his post up-thread).

If you're after directly Doing Good, wind power should be way down your list: it's got plenty of investment going in already. Tidal power could make better use of it. Or if you're feeling more speculative, R&D into wave power or nuclear fusion are others that spring to mind.

And you'd get altogether more bang for your buck investing in energy efficiency. Or - if you could make it work - birth control in those countries with high birth rates and all the associated problems of conflict, poverty, and emigration.

I did think of nuclear power, but not fusion though. What would £40bn get me in the world of fusion? Is it small change?

AiY(D)

[DrFfybes]

I did think of nuclear power, but not fusion though. What would £40bn get me in the world of fusion?

AiY(D)

Nothing in our lifetimes I expect.

You could build your own Nuclear Power plant for circa £25Bn. The rest would be ample for a space rocket or 2 (£600m each), a Dreadnought class nuclear submarine (£7.5Bn), a volcano on a private island (£12-15m), which leaves plenty for a swivel chair, monacle, and fluffy white cat.

Paul

[AsleepInYorkshire]

That's rather missing the point - that's like saying Murdoch is an idiot because a kid in his bedroom could replicate The Times or the Sun with MS Word and a laser printer. Aside from the fact that the technology is quite a lot more complex than that, what you're really buying is the network of people who are accustomed to using it, and the ability to influence them. For better or worse, Twitter is "sticky" and it's become the place where journalists congregate and where news is broken. And that means that whoever controls the Twitter algorithms and user policy has power, in the same way that Murdoch and the Barclays have power over traditional newspapers.

So you think Twitter will be the be all and end all of whatever it is they do? People could never imagine the death of the printed newspaper or the decline of the terrestrial broadcaster not so long ago.

Someone will invent Twitter Plus and everyone (who is still a real person) will move there.

Hi Snorvey,

Hopefully you're enjoying the odd walk around some very flat landscape

I'd like, if I may, to augment your post please. Twitter, Facebook & Instagram are really nothing more than advertising distributors. And I have to say, agreeing with you, that's always going to be a risky place to get one's income from. Someone is going to have to sell a huge amount of chocolate biscuits to make Twitter profitable.

It does seem like a business model with no moat, unless you count losing money as means of defence to entry

Take care

AiY(D)

[BobbyD]

The sellers now have exactly that opportunity. What "good" will they be doing with their £40bn?

That's not entirely true, mind you neither is the premise.

Musk has borrowed about $13 billion to finance the purchase on which he is now spending about about $1 bn a year on interest so he didn't spend $44 billion, although it may well end up costing him significantly more.

Whatever figure you arrive at for the 'purchase' Musk had access to as a lump sum, whilst the purchasers each have access to a fraction of it which isn't the same. Google reckons Dorsey is worth $4 billion for instance, and before lighting that $44 billion on fire Musk had access to atleast $160 other billions to take care of himself.

Personally

Haven't made this years ISA contribution yet. Pull the trigger on the new computer I've got specced out...

Good deeds come out of income not capital, although by the time we've got to this point that might not be quite so necessary...

That's rather missing the point - that's like saying Murdoch is an idiot because a kid in his bedroom could replicate The Times or the Sun with MS Word and a laser printer. Aside from the fact that the technology is quite a lot more complex than that, what you're really buying is the network of people who are accustomed to using it, and the ability to influence them. For better or worse, Twitter is "sticky" and it's become the place where journalists congregate and where news is broken

You'll know Musk has made it when he buys Friends reunited and myspace. Twitter only has had around 250 million active users, snd Twitter and social media are both too young to talk about meaningful stickiness, especially when they are dependnet on ad revenue and your CEO is a partisan social media troll. Existing platforms also seem to be generational, and not favoured by the wider movement back towards open standards, as exemplified by Jack Dorsey's new social media network...

[GrahamPlatt]

Someone will invent Twitter Plus and everyone (who is still a real person) will move there.

They already have (and they are. moving that is). It’s called Mastodon. Check it out https://joinmastodon.org/

[Hallucigenia]

So you think Twitter will be the be all and end all of whatever it is they do? People could never imagine the death of the printed newspaper or the decline of the terrestrial broadcaster not so long ago.

Someone will invent Twitter Plus and everyone (who is still a real person) will move there.

That's what I meant by any teenage dweeb inventing Chitter/Bitter/Shitter/Squitter or whatever. If it's a bit better than Twitter, then they'll all be over there tweeting their condolences in a flash.

I'm certainly not saying that Twitter has some kind of right to exist, that it will last forever. Just look at Altavista in search, or MySpace in social media. But at the same time, it now has a sufficiently big network that whatever replaces it would have to be more than just "a bit" better than Twitter - or Twitter has to get a lot worse (Musk is doing his best). There doesn't seem to be an equivalent right now - Mastodon seems to be the nearest but it has its quirks and lacks the instinctiveness of Twitter, it's a bit like Twitter for Linux - so they seem to be setting it up as a backup rather than using it day to day.

All sorts of things with big networks persist even if they're demonstrably not as good as some of the alternatives. A classic example is Brunel's insistence on using a 7' gap between the rails of the GWR - to allow more powerful engines, a more stable ride and more freight capacity - but they were reduced to the 4'8.5" spacing of the rest of the network by 1892.