Elon Musk makes monster deal perfect
He already has over 80 million followers, but that’s not enough for Elon Musk. The Tesla billionaire has increased his recently acquired stake of almost 10 percent in Twitter and completely taken over the social network. Twitter confirmed the billion-dollar deal that could fundamentally change Twitter.
Update April 25th:
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion
After some back and forth, the mega deal is perfect: Twitter accepts Elon Musk’s takeover bid. The billionaire and boss of Tesla and SpaceX takes over the social network Twitter for 44 billion US dollars (source: Twitter). Once the deal closes, Twitter will no longer be publicly traded and will be completely privately owned.
Elon Musk was quoted as saying that Twitter is a “pillar of democracy” and has already announced some changes with the takeover. So he wants release the Twitter algorithm under an open source licensefight spam bots and introduce authentication for all human users.
Even leading up to the acquisition, there were many question marks surrounding Musk’s motives. The eccentric tech billionaire has had a lot in the past a dubious understanding of freedom of speech shown, for example when he fired employees who pointed out abuses in his company or tried to silence critics (source: LA Times).
After the takeover, one of the most important communication platforms in the world is in the hands of such a man, without the supervision of shareholders and investors. Given the already heated Twitter discussions about global political events such as the Ukraine war, climate change or the upcoming US elections and the possible comeback of Donald Trump, many question marks remain as to where this deal will lead us.
Original report from April 4th, 2022:
Elon Musk buys 9.2 percent of Twitter
With 80.1 million followers, Elon Musk is already one of the most widely used Twitter users. Now the richest person in the world has secured a piece of Twitter for himself: For the equivalent of around 2.6 billion Musk joins Twitter (source: Securities and Exchange Commission). For this he receives around 73 million Twitter shares and thus owns 9.2 percent of the company.
Musk’s entry has the Share price boosted by Twitter. In pre-market trading, the company, which was founded 15 years ago, temporarily rose by 25 percent. In the meantime, the course has eased off a bit, but it can still show a plus of 20 percent compared to the previous day. For Musk, the investment has already paid off.
Twitter is one of the most important mouthpieces for Musk. Most recently, the eccentric billionaire called on President Putin to engage in a “man-to-man fight,” to which the Kremlin did not respond. Statements about cryptocurrencies are also popular, some of which cause noticeable price fluctuations in Bitcoin & Co. Tweets surrounding Tesla have Musk in the past Trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission brought in.
More than Tesla and SpaceX: These are Elon Musk’s biggest projects.
Elon Musk: Own Twitter clone off the table?
Public Musk has partly critical of Twitter as a company. Among other things, according to Musk, Twitter should not comply with the “principles of free speech”. Twitter would also help undermine democracy. Allegedly, Musk is even planning his own social media offering, as he explained at the end of March. He would “seriously think about it”. Time will tell whether he will continue to pursue these plans after joining Twitter.
