In August 2013, Jeff Bezos, Then he bought one of the richest people in the world The Washington Post for $250 million. After a few years, Lauren Powell Jobs, who runs Emerson Collective, bought a majority stake in Atlantic for more than $100 million. In 2018, he was a billionaire Marc BenioffIn turn, when the Salesforce founder collected his favorite posts, time magazine for $190 million. on Monday, Elon Musk He put it all together and bought his favorite copy from a media outlet: Twitter. The deal far outpaces those of Bezos, Jobs and Benioff, and will cost Musk about $44 billion — or 167. Washington Post—Twitter will be made private under Musk’s leadership.
In the deal, which was announced Monday after the company’s stock was discontinued, Twitter announced that shareholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock they own when the proposed deal closes. Twitter said in a statement that the deal was “unanimously approved by Twitter’s board of directors,” and that it is expected to close sometime in 2022, once it is subject to regulatory approval. In the press release announcing the deal, Musk said, “Freedom of speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital city arena where matters vital to humanity’s future are discussed.” “Twitter has tremendous potential, and I look forward to working with the company and the user community to unlock it,” he added.
So what now? Well, that depends on who you ask.
For the past two weeks, my phone has been exploding with text messages with eloquent phrases and questions – all of which need no further explanation: “crazy.” “Mad!” “crazy.” “what the hell?” “is this real?” The makers of this data shared one trait: They have, at one time or another, been involved in Twitter, either working for, advising, or investing in the company. And the “crazy” they were referring to was Musk’s looming and potential takeover of Twitter. Most speculated that the deal wouldn’t go through, not because they didn’t think Twitter was worth the value Musk provided, but because they all saw firsthand how hard it would be to run the world’s most influential social network. As one person told me, “Space travel is easier than moderating content on Twitter.”
Now it looks like Musk is about to learn that lesson, too. The question is, why on Earth (or Mars) would Musk want to own this platform that has been riddled with internal chaos and corporate backstabbing since its inception? A platform that helped contribute to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. A platform that helped lead heroic movements that changed culture but also helped drive division and criticism globally over the past 16 years. A platform where Musk will now have to make the difficult decision about whether to allow Donald J. Trump to come back and say what he wants without any repercussions at all.
Like anyone who has spent time on Twitter, Musk has had a love-hate relationship with the social network for many years now. Sometimes, the platform was called a “war zone”, and on many occasions he said he takes it Take a break from using it, only to come back after a few days (or sometimes hours). Other times, he’s talked about how much he “loves” Twitter. You have criticized the company freedom of expression Restrictions, then also criticize the modification of the company’s content. But over time, he became more and more obsessed with him. And he increasingly relied on Twitter as a marketing tool for product releases, as a place to fight battles with his companies’ critics and just fuck people in general.
[DROP] Musk’s relationship with Twitter first began to change on August 7, 2018, when he tweeted a Fateful message That he was “considering taking a Tesla at $420. Funding secured.” The Securities and Exchange Commission came after Musk misled potential investors, leading to an embarrassing (and very public) lawsuit, and a final settlement. Musk had to have any tweets about his public company, Tesla, that could affect shareholder value approved by the Council. Musk got a social media expert (a “securities lawyer”), who was supposed to fine-tune what he had to say. As all of this was happening, Twitter was clamping down on the accounts of people who were using the platform for bad purposes, it started blocking certain accounts, and Musk started to grow. frustrated with The fact that West Coast High Tech has become the “de facto arbiter of free speech”.
Then, something really began to change for Musk in March of this year when US securities regulators announced they had the authority to subpoena Musk over things he had said on Twitter, and also urged the judge to ensure he was not allowed to tweet. Things move on the stock exchange without repercussions. A few days later, on March 26th, Mask She said (on Twitter) that he was “seriously considering” building his social network, where freedom of expression would be the platform’s central thesis. But while all of this was happening, Musk was quietly buying Twitter shares. On April 4, Twitter published a file indicating that Musk now owns 9.2 percent of Twitter, and that he was the company’s largest personal shareholder. From there, things moved more chaotically and quickly than almost any hostile takeover in the company’s history. Musk was joining Twitter’s board of directors. Then it was not. Then he was going to buy the company. Then it was not. Finally, three weeks later, after Musk secured the financing, he left Twitter with no choice but to accept the deal.
One person I spoke to who is close to Musk speculated that he hadn’t originally set out to buy the company last month when he started buying Twitter stock, and that he fully intended to join Twitter’s board of directors in hopes that he could influence change in the social network. But along the way, something happened that freaked him out – perhaps, this person speculated, he was told he wouldn’t be able to tweet critically of Twitter if he was a board member there. This would only make musky more. If that’s the case, the last thing Musk wants is for someone else to tell him what he can and can’t say in public, especially on his favorite communication tool. In this case, it seems that owning Twitter has become personal.
