Twitter Board Agrees to $44 Billion Sale to Elon Musk

It’s truly occurring.

Following a Twitter Board meeting on Sunday, inside which they re-assessed Elon Musk’s $44 billion greenback provide to buy the corporate, Twitter has now confirmed that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Musk, which may have huge implications for the way forward for the platform.

Musk’s plan, as he’s communicated various times, is to take Twitter non-public, with a purpose to cut back the platform’s reliance on advertisements, thereby enabling it to be extra open to ‘free speech’, nonetheless Musk interprets such.

Musk has been a vocal proponent of free speech, and has usually criticized Twitter’s moderation efforts, together with its choice to ban former US President Donald Trump. Now, Musk will be capable to remake Twitter nonetheless he sees match, which is able to doubtless see huge modifications to the way it polices speech, and approaches moderation fully – which, based mostly on Musk’s feedback, would be the key focus of his new reign on the app.

Although how precisely Musk will go about any of this stays to be seen. Already the CEO of Tesla, taking up the highest job at Twitter himself looks as if a giant ask, which may see Musk appoint a brand new chief to supervise the following evolution of the app.

Present Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted this shortly after the information broke:

It’s inconceivable to foretell what comes subsequent, however you may guess that it’ll be a big shift in technique, which is able to doubtless be required if Musk desires to have any probability of recouping his huge funding within the platform.

Certainly, as some market analysts have famous, the truth that Twitter’s board has determined to simply accept Musk’s provide, after initially dismissing it as too low, would recommend that Twitter’s Q1 22 earnings report, due later this week, will not be going to be one for the corporate.

Twitter has been up towards it of late, with activist traders pushing the company to improve its results as a result of its constant under-performance, notably compared to Meta, which it as soon as thought of a rival within the social media area.

Now, that stress is relieved – besides, at such big particular person price (round a 3rd of Musk’s private wealth), Musk, you’ll assume, will need to have a plan to generate extra money from the app.

Might that see Musk switching to a subscription solely mannequin for all customers?

That may remove the app’s reliance on advertisements, whereas it will even be extra consistent with Musk’s plan to verify all users’ real identities, with a purpose to fight bots.

Would folks pay for Twitter in the event that they needed to? If Musk have been to lock each person out, except they signed up for Twitter Blue, or equal, would folks do it?

There are additionally then questions on elitism, and locking out poorer customers and areas, which might restrict Twitter’s progress. However then once more, if Twitter’s non-public, these choices would all be in-house anyway, because the platform would not be accountable to shareholders or the market.

It looks as if that may very well be a possible path for Musk to pursue, however what his actual plans are, no person however Musk actually has any thought.

It’s a rare growth, and one which once more raises questions in regards to the disproportionate energy of the billionaire class. Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for instance, owns The Washington Submit, and a few have prompt that it’s now more favorable to Bezos’ positions in its editorial protection (notice: unbiased research have discovered little to no evidence of bias within the Submit’s reporting since Bezos’ acquisition).

Will Elon look to censor critics, as he has in the past, on how personal social community?

He’s definitely saying that gained’t be the case:

Both method, put together for main modifications as Elon Musk weighs into the social media area, with management of his personal social media app.