The relationship between Twitter and Elon Musk looks like an impossible love affair at first glance. Our extraordinary duo begins the relationship with an unequal balance of power.
Elon Musk is in love with Twitter. He has 8.38 million followers. He tweets frequently. Some of them are controversial, others are criminal tweets.
So much so that when he discounted Tesla’s value by $14 billion with a tweet, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission barred him from posting information about the company. He once faced a defamation lawsuit for calling a cave diver a “paedophile” on Twitter.
But nothing has taken him away from Twitter. On the other hand, the Twitter company’s take on Musk isn’t quite as passionate.
When someone comes to you and offers $44 billion for your 16-year-old company, which isn’t growing as fast as its competitors, you might think that’s a bargain. Twitter shareholders tend to think so too.
Musk says Twitter has “tremendous potential” and wants to bring it to life. He also states that it is not his goal to make money through the business.
He already has a lot of money and wants to show that billionaires can have different priorities. Twitter responded by going defensive at first and “preparing the poison pill”. As a result, no one could own more than 15% of the company. But now it looks like a deal has been struck.
FROM WHERE?
Perhaps the Twitter Board was concerned by Musk’s comments that he wanted more “free speech” and less control, BBC Turkish reported.
Republicans, who have long believed that Twitter censors right-handers while protecting the free speech of leftists, welcomed it.
But regulators around the world are taking steps to moderate social media and ensure they take responsibility for the messages shared there; It imposes heavy fines for cases of incitement to violence, violent speech or insults.
This may have set off alarm bells for the board. Let’s not forget the financial part. Twitter’s core business model is based on ad revenue, and Elon Musk wants to change that.
BUT THIS IS A GAMEPLAY
He says his goal is to move to a subscription model. Now that all major social networks are free, Twitter plans to offer its users either to accept the sale of their personal data or to pay by subscribing to use the site.
But it’s a bet. He also loves cryptocurrencies. Could he be using Twitter to encourage payments in a volatile, unprotected cryptocurrency like Bitcoin?
Musk himself is reason enough. The richest man in the world, a serial entrepreneur with success stories like PayPal and Tesla.
Charismatic and outspoken. This makes it a wandering mine. He likes to test the limits and break the rules.
When he bought 9.2% of Twitter shares in January, there was a reason he refused to serve on the board: he didn’t want to be pressured into taking responsibility. He has an army of fans who adore him.
I once shared on Twitter that he doesn’t pay income tax because most of his wealth is in stocks and he doesn’t own property.
His fans immediately started writing replies wondering how I could say that, explaining that he is a great person and should be supported.
He didn’t try to temper Twitter with flowers and chocolates. As an aggressive businessman, he made an aggressive offer. No bargains, no compromises.
This is a sale from a private company to a private person. Since there is no merger of two big companies, it will be easier to get approval from market regulators.
Musk’s Twitter could turn into a very different network for his 300 million users. Of course, if they continue to use it. It could become a bolder place, perhaps less liberal. He can reopen the account of Donald Trump, whose account was permanently closed.
It is difficult to summarize the collective opinion of Twitter users. In my unscientific observation, for every tweet celebrating Musk’s move, there’s also a tweet saying he will stop using the platform. But when did we see that Twitter users agreed on something?