- Elon Musk sacked at least four top executives right after the takeover, including the CEO Parag Agarwal and CFO Ned Segal.
- Tweets and declares “The bird is freed.”
- Aims to reverse the ban on Donald Trump.
More enthralling than the wait for a Marvel movie, the Twitter deal which finally culminated in the last 24 hours, had all the makings of a potboiler. The on-again, off-again deal which had the global business community at the edge of their seat completed on Thursday, when Elon Musk completed the $44 billion buyout of Twitter while handing him control over one of the world’s widely used social media networks.
With a net worth of nearly $250 billion (£216 billion), Elon Musk, the billionaire, who is listed as the world’s richest person by Forbes and Bloomberg, had complained bitterly about the prevalence of bots on the network. Twitter, according to him, had “great potential” but had “languished for a long time.” Musk has criticized Twitter’s moderation practices, so users and personnel will presumably react to the news in varied contexts. Adding drama till the very end, every move down to each tantrum thrown by the tech major usurper filled the social media channels competing with the news on war and inflation across the world.
With accusations of misleading him with fake accounts, Musk has often shared news of dissatisfaction with Twitter, in particular, the CEO in his private encounters with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. On how to fix the platform, the two did not agree. Upon assuming control, he dismissed the company’s general counsel, Sean Edgett, Chief Operating Officer, Parag Agrawal, and Chief Financial Officer, Ned Segal, among other top officials. According to the New York Times, “at least one” executive was hauled out of Twitter’s headquarters on October 27.
After months of wavering and nearly missing a full-on lawsuit, the acquisition concluded, and Twitter is once again a privately held business. Nearly nine years after becoming public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker TWTR, its shares ceased trading. According to Reuters, equity investors like Sequoia Capital, Binance, Qatar Investment Authority, and others have obtained the necessary documentation from Musk’s lawyers for the finance pledge.
To transform Twitter into an “everything app” with one billion users, Elon Musk has pledged to make significant adjustments.
He started officially taking over the company by changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit,” and he even brought a sink into the office to make that “sink in” once and for all.
Musk has asserted that he will double his revenue in three years, but he hasn’t been particularly precise about how he proposes to accomplish this. He has expressed a desire to leave Twitter’s largely ad-supported model.
Before the transaction was finalised, there were rumours of stricter policies implemented by Musk, including the firing of 75% of the company’s employees. According to discussions between Musk and fellow entrepreneur Jason Calacanis advised reducing the number of Twitter staff to about 3,000, which means the path to glory will mean that the bird has to moult its feathers.
In the latest news, Twitter staff have penned an open letter to Musk in response to the acquisition news. The employees demand that Musk refrain from political bias and discrimination and maintain Twitter’s current workforce in a set of demands. The statement reads, “We demand that we be treated with respect and that we not be treated like simple pieces in a game played by billionaires.”
It now appears that a deal that at times seemed intractably or hopelessly shattered has been concluded. Since there are no laws limiting the accuracy of public information, some predict the real-world implications of Musk’s ownership of Twitter which might influence the political environment.
That being said, some quarters believe the popular social media platform may finally become free-wheeling, yet may border on fueling its long-standing problems of disinformation and toxic conversations. What remains to be seen, is how much will this impact competing social media platforms as free speech platforms become targets of business deals or larger sanctions originating from first-world nations.
Authored and Sourced by
Sarika Tiwari
Edited by
Anupama Sughosh
