Elon has never had a company that made money on ad revenue, despite every other tech CEO on earth trying to monetize in that direction.
So I agree, and feel like the default assumption is that he's going to try to get users to directly pay for content, which is what he's doing with Twitter Blue. We'll see if it works.
>“In today’s market, traditional local businesses need to be online to participate in the electronic commerce revolution,” said Elon Musk, founder and executive vice president of Zip2. “With Zip2’s Internet Start Program, our newspaper partners can offer their print advertisers an easy, low-cost way to take that first critical step.”
And now he's spent $44 billion buying a company that he knew primarily made its money from advertising and then spent his first week as owner complaining about advertisers leaving -- not something one who doesn't want to be in the advertising business normally does.
Ok... there were 3 months (dec 1998 - feb 199) that Elon owned a Zip2 which was advertiser-focused. He then sold the company and went and did something else.
I don't feel like this massively weakens my argument.
I'm not sure where your dates came from, they don't match what I've read. From what I can tell, the Musks' lost majority share in '96 (and Elon was replaced as CEO). Regardless, the business was built around businesses paying to appear from basically the get-go, and while Musk was not CEO for most of the company's existence, he still had considerable influence and when he disagreed with the company's direction, he led a coup to get the CEO replaced. Arguing that he didn't have influence or agree with the company's direction seems not particularly based in reality.
So I agree, and feel like the default assumption is that he's going to try to get users to directly pay for content, which is what he's doing with Twitter Blue. We'll see if it works.