Twitter and TikTok in trouble

Social networks are going through a challenging time. Chinese platform TikTok recently had a lawsuit, as did Elon Musk with his Twitter, over the cancellation of political activist Laura Loomer's account. These events revealed various facts and have confronted social networks with the question of how they will function in the coming years.

Twitter recently merged with the X Corp Solution organization, due to which it lost the title of the company. The move was made by CEO Elon Musk because of the plan to create a universal app for everything called X. The buyout of Twitter is supposed to be just one step towards achieving "The Everything App," which is meant to create comprehensive solutions, including a payment platform, in which Musk would use his experience from PayPal. Musk has previously registered three holding companies called X Holding I, II and III. It also changed its headquarters from the state of Delaware to Nevada. The Nevada Secretary of State announced that Musk registered these new companies on March 9 and applied to consolidate them on March 15.

 

Reducing the number of employees

Like a number of other world-famous companies, Twitter has embarked on a modern-day trend of layoffs. When Musk took over as CEO, the company had 8,000 employees, but now the numbers are at 1,500. Musk has expressed that although layoffs are not easy and are painful not only for the company's management, but also for the employees, they are bearing fruit. The positive impact of this move should soon be felt on Twitter. On the other hand, Netblocks reported that Twitter has been struggling with service outages since the beginning of the year, with the sixth one recorded during the last week. The reason may be the layoffs, as among the employees who left the company, there were also several technicians responsible for preventing service outages, according to information published by the Reuters agency.

 

Twitter is at zero accounting

However, thanks to the drastic measures, including layoffs, Twitter was able to recover from a negative cash flow of USD 3 billion.  The return of most advertisers to the social network has meant that in terms of revenue and expenses, the social network is currently stable, albeit at zero. At the same time, it has the highest number of users ever, which is good news for the network. Musk, who bought the company on October 22, 2022 for $44 billion, considers this decision to be the right one and claims that Twitter is heading in a good direction.

 

Senate vs. TikTok

The social network TikTok, owned by ByteDance, has been accused of breaching national security and collecting personal data from 150 million American users. In the US, the law regulating social networks has the support of the White House and 26 senators. The Biden administration has called on Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the apps or face a ban in the United States. According to them, the platform poses a danger, something countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, India, and Canada also believe. The European Union has also banned the use of TikTok on business phones due to fears of a cyber threat from the Chinese government.

 

Protection or infringement of civil liberties?

Critics say the bill is too broad and could infringe on civil liberties. How the regulation bill will turn out is questionable; users want to keep TikTok because of its great popularity, but the government is addressing their security. The company that owns the social network, ByteDance, has denied allegations of spying and says it has spent more than $1.5 billion to secure data. A ban from the US market would be a severe blow to the platform because of its high number of users.

 

Development of value on the stock exchange

The value of Twitter's shares, which are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, has risen by 170 percent over the past five years, so it seems that even scandals, lawsuits, and pandemics cannot have a strong negative impact on the development of its value. * On the other hand, ByteDance, which has not yet been listed on the stock exchange, was recently valued at approximately USD 220 billion, down from a peak valuation of USD 400 billion in 2021. The drop in valuation was due to a lack of investors interested in buying shares due to uncertainty about ByteDance's possible IPO and TikTok's future.

 

* Past performance is no guarantee of future results

 

This text constitutes marketing communication. It is not any form of investment advice or investment research or an offer for any transactions in financial instrument. Its content does not take into consideration individual circumstances of the readers, their experience or financial situation. The past performance is not a guarantee or prediction of future results.

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