Elon Musk Buys Twitter
BREAKING AS OF 4:30 PM - 4/25/22:
Elon Musk has reached an agreement with Twitter to purchase the social network for $43 billion, at $54.20 per share.
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it." [PR Newswire]
8:00 AM - 4/25/22:
The Wall Street Journal broke the story this morning (4/25/22) that Elon Musk has reached advanced negotiations with Twitter to buy out the social media company for $54.20 per share. $TWTR shares rose 4.8% to $51.28 in the premarket hours.
The deal would be the biggest leveraged buyout in history.
Vault is focusing on the Twitter deal because the social platform is the de facto home of the crypto industry. It’s where people share info and network, given the network’s strong social graph and focus on back and forth conversation.
Elon Musk has said that one of his priorities would be to restrict or reign in the automated bot accounts—many of which are used to spam people with promotions for crypto tokens. Even people in the space want these accounts gone.
What does Twitter look like under Musk’s control? Elon Musk is a manager of processes. That is the skill he has shown most clearly in building SpaceX and Tesla. Both of these companies operate on a massive scale. To function at such a large scale, the company's processes have to be nearly perfect.
Twitter has failed to find management over the years that can put processes in place that fundamentally improve the network. Most leadership of Twitter has failed to set a direction for the product. Features have been delayed extensively. Other features are implemented that were never asked for. False starts and missteps are everywhere.
If there is hope for Twitter under Musk’s leadership, it is that he can do for the network what he has done for SpaceX and Tesla:
Set a real vision for the company.
Find the right people for the right jobs within the company.
Put processes in place that structure the network.
Continually iterate and improve towards the vision.
If Musk can do this, Twitter might just have a chance.