Current:Home > MyTwitter auctioned off office supplies, including a pizza oven and neon bird sign -FundGuru
Twitter auctioned off office supplies, including a pizza oven and neon bird sign
View
Date:2025-04-14 05:19:08
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! (65665)
Related
- Are Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp down? Meta says most issues resolved after outages
- Oprah Winfrey and Arthur Brooks on charting a course for happiness
- Hospitality in Moroccan communities hit by the quake amid the horror
- France bans iPhone 12 sales over high radiation-emission levels
- McKinsey to pay $650 million after advising opioid maker on how to 'turbocharge' sales
- Golden Buzzer dance troupe Chibi Unity advances to 'AGT' finale after member injures knee
- Jill Duggar Dillard says family's strict rules, alleged deception led to estrangement
- F-35 fighter jets land in NATO-member Denmark to replace F-16s, some of which will go to Ukraine
- The Grammy nominee you need to hear: Esperanza Spalding
- Argentina shuts down a publisher that sold books praising the Nazis. One person has been arrested
Ranking
- Whoopi Goldberg is delightfully vile as Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’ stage return
- Several students at Vermont school sent to hospital for CO exposure, officials say
- Elon Musk Reflects on Brutal Relationship With Amber Heard in New Biography
- Paintings on pesos illustrate Argentina’s currency and inflation woes
- Don't let hackers fool you with a 'scam
- What a crop of upcoming IPOs from Birkenstock to Instacart tells us about the economy
- Paintings on pesos illustrate Argentina’s currency and inflation woes
- Chester County officials say prison security is being bolstered after Cavalcante escape
Recommendation
Jamie Foxx reps say actor was hit in face by a glass at birthday dinner, needed stitches
Firefighters fear PFAS in their gear could be contributing to rising cancer cases
Industrial Plants in Gary and Other Environmental Justice Communities Are Highlighted as Top Emitters
The escaped prisoner Danelo Cavalcante was caught. Why the ordeal scared us so much.
DeepSeek: Did a little known Chinese startup cause a 'Sputnik moment' for AI?
Mitt Romney says he's not running for reelection to the Senate in 2024
See IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley's handwritten notes about meeting with U.S. attorney leading Hunter Biden investigation
'Only Murders in the Building' Season 3 episodes schedule, cast, how to watch