Elon Musk's social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter, has halved its value in 12 months, according to an internal memo and sources.

The memo revealed that restricted stock units given to employees were valued at $45 a share, marking X's worth at approximately $19 billion.

This is less than half of the $44 billion that Musk acquired the company for in October last year.

What Happened In A Year

Since taking over the platform, Musk has implemented several controversial changes.

1. Rebranding it as X

2. Altering content rules

3. Cutting around 80% of the workforce

Consequently, X's daily active user count has decreased by nearly 20% during Musk's leadership.

Furthermore, the platform has become less attractive to advertisers, resulting in an estimated loss of at least half of its advertising revenue, as reported by Bloomberg.

This sharp revenue decline has raised concerns about servicing the firm's debt, which currently stands at approximately $1.2 billion in interest payments against a total debt of about $13 billion.

Although Musk aims to rely more on paid user subscriptions, currently, less than 1% of the user base has opted for premium subscriptions, generating less than $120 million in annual revenue.

Unfazed By Setbacks

Despite these challenges, Musk introduced revenue-sharing payments for individual creators, a popular addition to the platform.

He also implemented the Community Notes feature, where posts corrected by this feature become ineligible for revenue share, emphasizing the importance of accurate information over purely viral and potentially inaccurate content.

Musk envisions turning X into an "everything app," drawing inspiration from Asian super apps like WeChat.

This transformation would expand the social media platform to include financial services, video calls, and various lifestyle use cases.

Afterthoughts

I guess that there is some reason as to why Elon Musk is worth however much he is right now, and holds the amount of power he has currently.

Whilst there is undoubtedly some wariness and doubt in what he has done in the past year and there are statistics to prove it, I am honestly interested to see how the future will unfold.

Perhaps this bump at the start of his reign is merely an unavoidable path to be taken, and that all his decisions and foresight will collectively bring X to a level that is unpredicted.