So I would argue that Twitter desperately needs to either get much better as an ads platform, or switch to some form of product that generates subscription revenues. I think that does require large changes and a bunch of features. Maybe not better programmers; probably just product pointing the programmers they had towards different features.
And they already had been a target for activist investors; that was going to continue, regardless of the stock price. See Elliot Management in 2020/2021. So if Musk hadn't done this, I bet someone else would have.
... with ever increasing revenue to cover it. If you take a look at the quarterly reports, clearly they had a spending problem and not so much a problem with ads.
The business was fine. The leaders were not. Despite that, they certainly weren't bringing Twitter to the brink of bankruptcy.
That changed dramatically when Musk added over a billion dollars in annual debt payment load, and proceeded to torpedo their ad business. That changed it from “our boat leaks” to “the hull is gone”, and dramatically reduced the options for dealing with it.
I can't stand Musk but my god did he give the shareholders a free lunch. I can't even imagine what the stock price would be right now with no deal.
Twitter doesn’t need to make constant product changes, as is evidenced by their ability to continue to support hundreds of millions of users and consistently generate billions of dollars of revenue: they’re valuable as-is. The Muskian narrative that Twitter needs better programmers who churn out more features is just not true.
I very much agree that Jack was half-assing management of the company but the consequence was that Twitter was falling far short of its potential, not that Twitter was struggling. If your argument is that the lack of profitability makes Twitter vulnerable to activist investors, then, well, you’re about a decade behind on market sentiment. Nobody cares about profitability any more: if the company can sustain itself, which Twitter could, then stock price is all that matters.