Current:Home > ScamsTwitter auctioned off office supplies, including a pizza oven and neon bird sign -EliteFunds
Twitter auctioned off office supplies, including a pizza oven and neon bird sign
View
Date:2025-04-17 01:03:04
Are you in need of some mid-century modern furniture, industrial kitchen equipment or audio-visual systems? Or looking to brighten up your apartment with a giant neon bird sign?
Then you're in luck. Twitter's San Francisco headquarters auctioned off "surplus corporate office assets" online for a fleeting 27 hours, giving potential lucky bidders the chance to take a piece of the struggling company home with them.
Auction house Global Heritage Partners is running the de facto fire sale, which closed at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on Wednesday and charged a buyer's premium of 18%.
The 631 lots include office supplies like projectors and massive white boards (in both old-school and digital form), kitchen equipment from espresso machines to refrigerators (including a kegerator beer dispenser), a wide variety of chairs and couches and miscellaneous modern-day workplace staples like assorted power adapters and KN95 masks in bulk.
There's also a bit of Twitter-specific memorabilia, including a six-foot-tall "@"-shaped planter sculpture filled with artificial flowers (with a high bid of $8,250), a blue neon sign in the shape of the app's bird logo ($22,500) and a smaller, sturdier bird statue ($20,500).
Other notable items include a pizza oven ($10,000), a conference room-sized booth ($7,250) and several individual soundproof phone booths, packs of high-end desk chairs ($4,900) and sit-stand desks ($900) and two stationary bikes that double as recharging stations ($2,400).
Overall, an eclectic assortment of goods and a jarring sight for those who once used them.
"Weird to see the Twitter office on auction," tweeted Kevin Weil, the company's former senior vice president of product. "Great memories from a different era."
Scott Budman, an NBC News tech and business reporter, pointed out some familiar items: A table where he interviewed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey got a bid for $1,000, the espresso machine where former editorial director Karen Wickre offered him coffee is going for $1,700.
"Good luck, I guess," he wrote.
Ross Dove, chief executive of Heritage Global, the parent company of Heritage Global Partners, told the New York Times that more than 20,000 people had registered to bid online — the most of any of the firm's auctions over the last 90 years and a fact he attributes to the public's fascination with Twitter and Musk himself. He estimated that the auction would net Twitter some $1.5 million.
The auction comes at a tough time for the company, which lost many major advertisers — as well as employees, thanks to layoffs and mass resignations — after Elon Musk took over in October and has since sought to aggressively cut costs and raise revenue.
Musk — who has announced his plans to resign as CEO — said in December that the company was "not, like, in the fast lane to bankruptcy anymore."
Still, its financial outlook remains murky, with the New York Times reporting that same month that Twitter had not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any global offices for weeks and was considering denying people severance payments. Employees have also discussed the possibility of selling usernames to make money, the Times reported last week.
This month, Guinness World Records confirmed that Musk had broken the record for largest amount of money lost by one individual. He lost between $180 billion and $200 billion since November 2021, largely due to the poor performance of Tesla stocks in recent years.
Musk remains the second-richest person in the world and, as of this week, is on trial for securities fraud over a series of 2018 tweets teasing a Tesla buyout that never happened.
veryGood! (97365)
Related
- Selena Gomez engaged to Benny Blanco after 1 year together: 'Forever begins now'
- 'Like milk': How one magazine became a mainstay of New Jersey's Chinese community
- To save money on groceries, try these tips before going to the store
- YouTube will no longer take down false claims about U.S. elections
- Military service academies see drop in reported sexual assaults after alarming surge
- RHONJ: Find Out If Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga Were Both Asked Back for Season 14
- Fixit culture is on the rise, but repair legislation faces resistance
- The Art at COP27 Offered Opportunities to Move Beyond ‘Empty Words’
- All That You Wanted to Know About She’s All That
- It's not just you: Many jobs are requiring more interviews. Here's how to stand out
Ranking
- Jamie Foxx gets stitches after a glass is thrown at him during dinner in Beverly Hills
- 'I still hate LIV': Golf's civil war is over, but how will pro golfers move on?
- Elon's giant rocket
- Inside Clean Energy: Three Charts to Help Make Sense of 2021, a Year Coal Was Up and Solar Was Way Up
- Appeals court scraps Nasdaq boardroom diversity rules in latest DEI setback
- This airline is weighing passengers before they board international flights
- Eva Mendes Shares Rare Insight Into Her and Ryan Gosling's Kids' “Summer of Boredom”
- Ashley Benson Is Engaged to Oil Heir Brandon Davis: See Her Ring
Recommendation
Retirement planning: 3 crucial moves everyone should make before 2025
Republicans Are Primed to Take on ‘Woke Capitalism’ in 2023, with Climate Disclosure Rules for Corporations in Their Sights
Amazingly, the U.S. job market continues to roar. Here are the 5 things to know
Warming Trends: Climate Insomnia, the Decline of Alpine Bumblebees and Cycling like the Dutch and the Danes
Justice Department, Louisville reach deal after probe prompted by Breonna Taylor killing
2 more infants die using Boppy loungers after a product recall was issued in 2021
When an Oil Well Is Your Neighbor
‘Timber Cities’ Might Help Decarbonize the World