$26.4 billion/year.
This is the number musk in the proposal submitted to investors. According to the New York Times, Musk said he would boost Twitter's revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028.
It's an ambitious plan because Twitter's revenue has only been $5.08 billion in the past 2021. This means that in 7 years, Musk will increase Twitter's revenue by 520%, which is equivalent to a compound growth rate of nearly 27%.
That's not an easy number, and twitter has only surpassed it in 2021 in the last few years. In the last 7 years, Twitter's overall growth rate was only 3.7 times. Obviously, under the new Internet environment and revenue scale, Twitter will inevitably need to update the growth curve if it wants to accelerate its growth against the trend.
In the face of doubts, Musk gave the answer, simple and crude:
Subscription fees apply.
If you open the financial report, Twitter is still a Yahoo-type free-to-play Internet company. The 200 million-day-active supermedia comes from advertising nearly 90 percent of its revenue, while the remaining 10 percent comes from "data licensing" — the latter of which helps advertisers better run their ads.
In Musk's vision, in 2028, advertising revenue will account for only 45% of Twitter's revenue, reaching $12 billion. Compared to the aggressive 5x revenue program, the growth of advertising revenue is relatively "conservative", and will only increase by 160%, equivalent to an average annual growth of 15%.
It's even lower than Musk's expectations for user growth — Musk is determined to increase the number of daily active users from 217 million at the end of 2021 to 931 million in 2028, equivalent to 48% of Facebook's current 1.9 billion daily active users.
Subscription services will be Twitter's strongest source of growth, rising from zero to $10 billion, accounting for 46% of Twitter's overall performance increase over the next 7 years. This is by no means an easy number, after all, Netflix's revenue is currently only $29 billion, and Disney+'s subscription revenue is only about $6 billion.
In addition, the Twitter payment business, as a new business that was "exclusively invented" by Musk, was put on the proposal for the first time. This feature, which is designated as a tipping and shopping tool, is planned to have commission revenue of $1.8 billion in 2028.
Payments are the second bright spot in the entire plan, after the subscription model. Because it represents Musk's thinking about Twitter's traffic ecology. If you refer to the commission ratio paid by PayPal, $1.8 billion should correspond to a transaction size of about $50 billion, equivalent to two eBays in 2021. Even according to the 20% live streaming margin model, Twitter's transaction size needs to reach the current two quarters of eBay's transaction size.
Image source: Play Copyright Gallery
From the perspective of the business incremental plan for the next 7 years, the new businesses that start from zero, such as payment and subscription, will become a business revenue cluster of the same scale as advertising revenue. In other words, Musk wants to use these innovative businesses to recreate a tweet in a commercial sense in addition to advertising revenue, and to recreate 4 tweets in terms of user scale.
Rip off Twitter's Poker Face?
If you want to choose the most difficult one between the exaggerated user goal and the revenue goal, it is still the user - although if we dig the deepers, we may find that the two may probably be the same thing.
In 2020, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of portraits of Twitter users in the United States. Based on this portrait, we can find that the essence of Twitter may be a single-party communication platform with strong colors, rather than a social platform - which is also what distinguishes Twitter from Facebook at all.
The data shows that 10% of Twitter users have collectively produced 92% of the platform's Tweet content.
In addition, of the 750,000 accounts surveyed by research institutions, only 10,151 accounts have more than 10 followers. This means that a significant portion of Twitter's users actually use the Twitter platform to browse, rather than updating on a daily basis. This is actually similar to how we feel about a domestic head community product.
Further data shows that 69% of the 10% of the top people accounts that determine the ecology of Twitter content are actually Democratic Parties.
And even if you compare the data of Democrats and Republicans, the number of tweets posted by a single Democratic-leaning person is actually more than double that of a Republican — the head account of the Democratic-leaning person publishes an average of 157 tweets per month, compared with only 79 Republican-leaning people. In other words, if you look at the strength of the tweet, the community strength of the Democrats in the head account is about four times that of the Republicans.
If it were not for the fact that Democrats are more fond of talking online, such a huge difference in ideological positions is difficult to say that it is a normal phenomenon for a social platform with national attributes. This can also explain the trade-off of platform attitudes in some national-level disputes.
This slanted preference among political crowds, and the serious partisan overtones behind it, will obviously also significantly undermine the platform's potential for dissemination in a general sense.
In a Question from Musk questioning whether Twitter is dying, Terry pointed out that among Twitter's top ten bloggers, there are many entertainment stars with heads, and they rarely speak on Twitter.
"If Taylor Swift didn't speak for three months, Justin Bieber didn't speak again for a whole year."
Source: Twitter
From the actual results, Twitter is facing a continuous slowdown in growth after 2020, and its daily active users have remained in the past 7 quarters, with a total growth of only 30 million people.
And if Twitter really wants to break through the goal of 900 million daily lives, this self-contained strategy is obviously far from enough. If Twitter becomes a platform for a single portrait group, it will obviously be difficult for it to become a media platform that everyone likes.
Image source: Originated from the network
This is also why Musk is particularly concerned about whether some stars in the entertainment industry will still speak out on Twitter.
Therefore, Twitter is the long-term commercial value of Twitter for these head KOLs with huge demand for communication attributes. They can not only bring new business value to Twitter, but also re-prove the business value of Twitter, representing Twitter to regain the greatest common denominator of the mass community.
So this may be the real meaning of Musk holding high the banner of "free speech":
Bring this serious community back alive and cool, let people with different opinions come back to Twitter discussions, and let celebrities come back from Instagram.
This is the only way for a 900 million monthly living community, and of course it will inevitably face the challenge of renewal.
"Jiang Taigong" Musk
The subscription service, which Musk has packaged as a revenue killer, is actually a "failed" business that Twitter has slowly progressed in the past two years.
In early 2020, Twitter's advertising revenue plummeted, leading to management hoping to hedge some of the revenue losses through Twitter Blue's subscription-based program, but it didn't get much response because the feature was too chicken for users.
For example, Twitter Blue users can't even edit Twitter, but can only preview it before sending it, or withdraw it within 30 seconds; and as a short-text blogging platform, Twitter also provides users with a touching "reader mode" for users to have a better reading experience, as well as BookMarks (similar to bean columns) that can be completely replaced by web note-taking software...
A total of three functions, a total charge of $3.49 CAD, equivalent to 18 RMB / month.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has publicly stated that the subscription system function is "early and the implementation threshold is high", and some media have bluntly said that Twitter's attempt to "let Wall Street yawn". A year later, Dorsey, who had a poor income, resigned from his CEO position and became a full-time founder.
In the final analysis, Twitter's fear of membership service functions is actually afraid that excessive functions will hurt ordinary users, which will damage the reputation of the platform in the minds of users, and then affect long-term user growth.
But children make choices, adults want them all. Musk has long noticed the potential of Twitter Blue, and naturally noticed Twitter's shyness in this type of feature.
After all, withdrawing within 30 seconds is a bit too ridiculous, and Musk posted a vote on his social platform on whether Twitter should add an "edit" button.
Source: Twitter
Of course, this is not the first time musk has voted phishing with his own account, similar votes include:
Source: Twitter
It's hard to say that Musk didn't "fish" on the Twitter revision:
Adding an edit button may test user attitudes and create a possibility for Twitter users to endorse "major revisions." Musk himself is a "savior" image to "change" Twitter's "bad user experience.".
The final result is that Musk can make some functional changes that the Twitter team originally wanted to do but did not dare to do, paving the way for a more radical version of Twitter Blue in the future.
Creating free speech is to pave the way for welcoming a wider range of users to enter, and ultimately to expand the entire user pool of Twitter and prepare for a wider Twitter ecosystem.
And all of this is presented in a playful, American way of personal heroism, through a grand, multi-billion-level public opinion focus. And everything you eat melon for is actually exactly what Musk wants you to see.
Source: Twitter
All in all, Musk wants Twitter to do a more aggressive subscription membership strategy, with more active celebrity accounts, and a thriving ecosystem that can pay for huge payments...
And these things that are "new" to Twitter are no strangers in another Internet world.
On the other side of the ocean, a perhaps (once) Twitter-like head Internet company in the world is collectively referred to as a "Weibo value-added service" in its earnings report.
This category first appeared in the financial report in 2017, and now has a volume of about 1.7 billion yuan. Compared with Twitter's careful launch of three functions, Weibo members have four categories and 31 privileges of extreme luxury.
Some of these functions such as "semi-annual visibility", "Weibo source", "edit weibo", "Weibo top" and so on are almost all value-added services that Weibo account operators like very much, and are also very in line with Musk's goal of making the brand and the government pay.
Image source: Weibo
In addition, Weibo will directly sign the corresponding star in the early stage and invite the other party to settle in. At the same time, through the establishment of celebrity super talk, star power list, support star guild and other ways, the commercial value of stars in the fan group is intuitively presented on the platform, and then helps these traffic stars to get more movie roles and commercial endorsements.
In this way, these star support programs can not only attract stars to settle in, but also allow stars to form "inner volumes" between them, in order to compete for rankings to operate their own social account assets, thereby eliminating the emergence of high-fan zombie star accounts.
Of course, it should be noted here that the number of votes cast by members should theoretically be more than ordinary users, so as to form a closed loop.
Source: Network | 2017 Weibo European and American list
On this basis, the user page can synchronize the previous Twitter wallet, one-click diversion loans, insurance and purchase of Dogecoin for live tipping.
Countermeasures have been thought out, but who can help Musk send it?