The saga of Twitter and Elon Musk has finally come to an end after the billionaire founder of SpaceX paid the agreed $44 billion to buy the popular social media platform.
Musk’s first day has already been controversial as he has decided to oust a handful of the company’s top officers including Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer, Parag Agrawal alongside the Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust, and the firm’s General Counsel.
Even though not entirely unexpected, these measures have been quite abrupt and may prompt other C-level executives within the firm to step aside and let Mr. Musk execute his plan – whatever that is – for the company.
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
The Road to Becoming Twitter’s Owner Has Been Rocky for Elon
Musk’s crusade started in April this year when the founder of Tesla (TSLA) made a serious offer to acquire all of the platform’s outstanding shares at $54.2 apiece shortly after taking a 9.2% stake in the company.
“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy”, Elon wrote to the Board of Directors of the California-based tech company.
To secure the payment, Musk would sell a large portion of its Tesla holdings while he also resorted to a group made up of financial institutions and venture capitalists who would contribute more than $13 billion to complete the deal.
However, only 3 months after he made his offer, Elon started to have doubts about the acquisition and finally walked out of the deal in a move that caused significant discomfort in the Board of Directors of Twitter.
Musk cited that the social media company failed to appropriately disclose the operating metrics concerning the presence and influence of bots on the platform’s user figures and details on how the metric was calculated.
Even though Elon’s legal team provided justification for his decision to back down from the deal, the Board did not agree with their views and took the matter to court to resolve the dispute.
A Delaware court took up the case and this was the beginning of the latest chapter in the saga as Musk was apparently forced to weigh the cost of a lengthy legal fight that may not lead to the expected outcome.
Judge Kathaleen McCormick was assigned to the case and set a strict deadline for Musk to finalize the deal by October 28 to avoid going to trial. The billionaire waited until the very last moment to make the payment and made a statement by entering the company’s headquarters carrying a sink.
Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
Elon Finally Owns Twitter – What Will He Do Next?
Now that he has acquired the social media platform, the question on everybody’s mind is which will be the first steps that Elon Musk will take to make the place an example of free speech as he says he intends.
The text messages sent to prominent figures within the business world and his own tweets about the matter seem to be pointing to the possibility that Twitter will focus on payments and subscriptions to generate money – not adverts.
Moreover, Elon may partner with Jack Dorsey’s latest social-media-related project – the AT protocol – to power the platform. This is an initiative that seeks to make social media spaces more decentralized by relying on a federated network of servers while also allowing users to keep their data private by being able to sign up for multiple platforms by using a single account.
Finally, some decisions that the public is expecting Elon to make include restituting the accounts of ex-President Donald Trump and the famous rapper formerly known as Kanye West.
Will Twitter become a better place after Elon? Only time will tell.
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