Elon Musk in an interview expressed how he believed that Twitter has become more like a de facto town square and how he is not buying Twitter as a financial investment but as a social service for the public good.
Before we dive deeper into why Elon Musk Bought Twitter, let us know more about the trillionaire businessman and Twitter.
What is Twitter?
Founded in March 2006, Twitter is an American social networking and microblogging site where users can interact with the public via tweets.
On Twitter, registered users can post, like and retweet while unregistered users can only read tweets that are publicly available for all.
Twitter is currently a piece of trending news due to it being brought by Elon Musk.
Who is Elon Musk?
Elon Musk, born in 1971, is an investor, entrepreneur, and a business magnate with a net worth of around 26,500 Crore USD.
Elon is now owning Twitter. With around 84 million followers and no strategy on how to handle his accounts, he says his tweets are just a reflection of a stream of consciousness.
But how did he end up buying Twitter, let us see how?
Let us see how this started: Buying Twitter
After buying 9% of Twitter’s shares for around 2.65 billion dollars he tweeted about it which subsequently helped twitter as they experienced the largest intraday surge of around 27% since 2013.
Being offered a seat on Twitter’s board of directors would have made any one of us happy but Elon wasn’t satisfied. He had some plans in mind for Twitter and with a prohibition on how much per cent of the company’s share he could buy, he knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.
Thus, before his appointment on a board of directors became effective i.e., on April 9, he declined the offer.
Then on the 14th of April, he made an unsolicited offer to buy Twitter for 43 billion dollars. He wanted to take the company private and a safe space for people to express and put into use their freedom of speech.
To block Elon’s takeover of the company, Twitter introduced a Poison Pill strategy the next day. However, on the 20th of April, he made a tender offer to buy Twitter at around 46 billion dollars.
This was accepted by Twitter just a few days after on the 25th of April.
Why did Elon buy Twitter if not for money?
Twitter has extraordinary potential said Elon in a letter to Brett Taylor the board of directors of Twitter. I will unlock it he added.
An interview with Elon shared how he wasn’t buying Twitter for money i.e., as a financial investment. If not this, then why did he buy Twitter? Let us see why?
He believes that Twitter wasn’t protecting the principle of free speech of its users thus, he even conducted a poll on Twitter asking his fans, follower, and the public if they believed that Twitter was protecting the freedom of speech and around 70% of 2 million people votes no.
He wants to increase the trust of the public on the platform by making it an inclusive place with true freedom of speech.
However, there could be some hidden reasons.
Elon Musk is best at marketing on Twitter. He has 84M followers and he uses it every now and then to market its products on the platform.
He did not want to lose the influence he has on the platform.
By acquiring Twitter, he has now booked free advertisement for SpaceX, Tesla, Dogecoin, Bitcoin and anything he invests in.
What was the reaction once the news of Elon buying Twitter came out?
The second the news hit Twitter, there was seen a mixed reaction to it.
Some people like Elon’s fans, followers and a portion of the public showed huge excitement and hypes the news, while many others were concerned by the idea of the richest man in the world owning twitter and is planning to add it to his company’s many assets.
What plans does Elon have for Twitter now?
Elon Musk shared a few of many plans and rough ideas that he has stored for Twitter which he plans to execute now that he has bought Twitter.
Some of them are as follows,
- Edit button: – Elon is planning to add a time-sensitive edit button for all the tweets. For now, you can only delete the tweet if you feel you have made an error even if it is like a small spelling or grammatical mistake in a 100 words tweet. It is said that this was already in process, but Elon has made it official.
- Making things transparent: – Elon is planning to make the content moderation practice more transparent i.e., users will have full knowledge of whether their tweets are being promoted or de-emphasized.
- Remove bans: – Elon himself being a very prominent user of Twitter and a critic, thus, holds a huge power at changing the market with just a single tweet. Fearing a ban himself, it is said that Elon is planning to remove the practice of ban and only suspend an account for a limited amount of time.
- Making coding structure transparent: – Elon expressed how he plans to post twitter’s open-source data on Github so that people can access the company’s data, analyze it and put forward their suggestions if they have any.
Elon Musk buying Twitter: FAQ
Q1. How many shares could Elon buy if he joined Twitter as a board of directors?
Ans: As part of the deal, he could only buy 14.9% if he has accepted the offer.
Q2. Why wasn’t the 14.9% share enough for Elon Musk?
Ans: Elon had some plans in his mind for Twitter, but he could not bring them to action if he had become the board of directors as for what he had in his need he needed at least 15% of Twitter’s shares to execute.
Q3. What is the poison pill strategy?
Ans: poison pill was a strategy Twitter came up with to block Elon’s takeover of the company. In this strategy, shareholders were allowed to buy additional stocks if a hostile takeover occurred.
Q4. How much was Twitter sold for?
Ans: Twitter was sold for around 46 billion dollars to Elon Musk.
Q5. Who was the owner of Twitter before Elon Musk?
Ans: The Vanguard Group previously owned Twitter before Elon Musk.
Q6. When did Elon Musk buy Twitter?
Ans: On April 25th Twitter accepted Elon Musk offer thus, it can be said that Elon bought Twitter on the 25th of April. However, the company is yet to be gone private. The exact date is still unknown but it should be soon.