Billionaire buys Twitter for
You don't even need 280 characters to deliver this momentous news:
The
Now, after lining up the funds (his own and hefty support from Morgan Stanley) Musk will pay
With Twitter's earnings report just days away, it's likely the new owner will show up during the company's Q1 earnings call - at least just to say "hi," and demurely refuses to answer most analysts' questions directly.
In a release on the acquisition, Musk said, "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.
"I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential - I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
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Musk's triumph comes after a circuitous path to ownership: First he bought almost 10% of Twitter shares, giving him a seat at the table and inviting him to the board. Musk accepted and then just as quickly backed out. But he wasn't finished. Soon, he was offering
Soon after, Musk, who has been on the platform since 2009, returned to a tender offer, which meant he'd need to pull together all the money to buy the company. As of last week, Musk secured the funds, and over the weekend, Musk and Twitter's executive team met in person to hammer out the details.
A bumpy road
Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of a Musk-owned Twitter. In the run-up to the announcement, #RIPTwitter was trending on the platform.
As for what comes next, Musk has made clear his intentions to ensure that Twitter supports free speech from all sides (the implication being that it currently does not, though there is no empirical evidence to support this).
He may revisit some user bans, including that of former
He'll likely open-source Twitter's code.
A fan of blockchain and NFTs, Musk might push the platform more aggressively into the crypto space.
But investors and backers will be most interested in Musk's growth plan. Twitter has done a decent job of generating more revenue from existing users, but its growth has in recent years been relatively slow and flat. It's not clear that Twitter could ever have the broad-based, global appeal of, say
It's unclear what Musk can do to reenergize some of Twitter's biggest celebrity accounts.
Musk will probably fast-track the already-under-development Tweet Edits feature, since he made it clear during the acquisition effort that he's a fan.
What will Elon do?
What happens next depends on
Maybe.
It might also be the man who impulsively tweets his inner ID and EGO. Who jokes that "The next Twitter board meet's gonna be lit," with a picture of him smoking a joint on
There sometimes seems to be little middle ground for Musk, who is both extremely successful and rich and extremely impulsive and emotional.
The fear that Musk will let the worst element back on Twitter -- Nazis, trolls, anti-vaxxers,
Still, Musk doesn't truly know the inner workings of Twitter's extensive (and still flawed) content moderation system. He soon will. That may inspire some different and more rational thinking about how to excite and energize Twitter for the future while protecting the most vulnerable who still use it every day.
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