Elon Musk completes $44bn Twitter takeover

[6Foot2]

Link: Elon Musk completes $44bn Twitter takeover - BBC News

 

The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has completed his $44bn (£38.1bn) takeover of Twitter, according to US media and an investor in the firm.

 

He tweeted "the bird is freed," in an apparent reference to the deal closing.

 

A number of top executives, including the boss, Parag Agrawal, have reportedly been fired.

 

It brings to a close a saga that saw Twitter go to court to hold the billionaire to the terms of a takeover deal that he had tried to escape.

 

Twitter has not yet confirmed the takeover, but an early investor in the company told the BBC that the deal had been completed.

 

Mr Musk, a self-styled "free speech absolutist", has been critical of Twitter's moderation policies and the news will be greeted with mixed feelings by Twitter users and employees.

 

Many people on the right of US politics will celebrate the exit of Mr Agrawal as chief executive. They view people like Mr Agrawal, and his predecessor, Jack Dorsey, as liberals who are curtailing free speech.

 

They also think that under their stewardship, Twitter has censored conservative voices - an accusation that Twitter denies.

 

Mr Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and the firm's top legal and policy executive, Vijaya Gadde, are no longer with the company, according to US media reports.

 

Mr Agrawal and Mr Segal were escorted out of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters after the deal closed, the Reuters news agency reported.

 

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone thanked Mr Agrawal, Mr Segal and Ms Gadde for their "collective contribution" to the business.

 

Meanwhile, Bret Taylor - who had served as Twitter's chairman since last November - updated his LinkedIn profile to indicate that he was no longer in the post.

 

The social media platform's shares will be suspended from trading on Friday, according to the New York Stock Exchange's website.

 

Mr Musk said he bought the social media platform to help humanity and he wanted "civilisation to have a common digital town square".

 

Earlier this week, Mr Musk tweeted a video of himself walking into Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco carrying a kitchen sink with the caption: "let that sink in!"

 

He also changed his Twitter profile to read "Chief Twit".

 

On a recent earnings call, the Tesla founder said Twitter was "an asset that has just sort of languished for a long time, but has incredible potential, although obviously myself and the other investors are overpaying for Twitter right now".

 

Long road to a deal

 

Mr Musk's early investments in Twitter initially escaped public attention. In January, he began making regular purchases of shares, so that by the middle of March he had accumulated a 5% stake in the firm.

 

In April, he was revealed as Twitter's largest shareholder, and by the end of the month, a deal was finally reached to buy the company for $44bn.

 

He said he planned to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform as a venue for free speech.

 

But by mid-May Mr Musk, a prolific Twitter user, had begun to change his mind about the purchase, citing concerns that the number of fake accounts on the platform was higher than Twitter claimed.

 

In July, he said he no longer wished to acquire the company. Twitter, however, argued the billionaire was legally committed to the acquisition and eventually filed a lawsuit to hold him to the deal.

 

In early October, Mr Musk revived his takeover plans for the company on condition that legal proceedings were paused.

 

Change ahead

 

There has been no comment yet from Twitter about its new management team, but whoever becomes its next chief executive, it is clear that Mr Musk will ultimately be in charge of the company.

 

He fell out with Mr Agrawal in early April - when he sat briefly on Twitter's board.

 

In private messages revealed in court filings, Mr Musk talked about how Mr Agrawal didn't understand how to fix the social media platform's problems.

 

It appears now Mr Musk is at the helm, many people who have been banned for hate speech or disinformation may be invited back to the platform.

 

Former US President Donald Trump remains banned from Twitter - a decision Mr Musk has previously said was "foolish" and that he would reverse.

 

However, Mr Trump has insisted he won't be reactivating his account - preferring instead to post on his own platform Truth Social.

 

Mr Musk has posted that his plans for Twitter include "X, the app for everything".

 

Some suggest this might be something along the lines of the hugely successful Chinese app WeChat, a kind of "super app" that incorporates different services including messaging, social media, payments and food orders.

[mavhc]

[jthompson]

If you have to post a gallery of some screenshots of some words that you've written to encourage high-quality content, you have to wonder whether the platfrom you've just bought is actually conducive to said high quality content.

[mavhc]

At least now you can edit the global MAX_CHARS variable

[6Foot2]

Link: Elon Musk Twitter Blue Tick Verification Price Stephen King Negotiate Tweet Explain Longer Form

 

Elon Musk’s plan to charge Twitter users $19.99 per month to keep their blue-tick verification badges has the Twitterati up in arms. It all started as Musk, soon after the takeover, tweeted that Twitter’s verification process “is being revamped” right now. This was followed by media reports, based on the company’s internal correspondence, suggesting that Twitter will charge users $19.99 for the Twitter Blue badge instead of the current price of $4.99 per month. While several Twitter users expressed their disgust and concern on the platform, celebrated horror writer Stephen King made his feelings clear in his own inimitable style.

 

King — the award-winning author known for titles such as “It”, “Pet Semetary”, “The Green Mile”, and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” — tweeted on October 31, “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*** that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

 

To this, Musk responded by saying, “We need to pay the bill somehow!” In a mood to negotiate, Musk floated, “How about $8?” He said that the microblogging platform can’t “rely entirely” on advertisers...

[elsiegee40]

Charging Twitter users for blue ticks would be a disaster [New Statesman]

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2022/10/twitter-blue-tick-charging-paid-verification-disaster

 

Let us start with a confession: I have a blue tick on Twitter (actually the verified badge is a white tick on a blue background, but still). I have, in fact, had a blue tick for more than a decade. I have forgotten what it is like to live without one.

 

So far as I can recall, I didn’t get verified by a journalistic outlet I worked for, or for any fame I had. Someone had been impersonating me on Twitter. My real handle is @jamesrbuk; they used @jamesbruk and an identical picture and bio, and then sent abusive messages to my friends. After suspending the impostor Twitter offered me the hallowed tick.

 

This is, in fact, the purpose for which the verified mark was created. It came out of a lawsuit against Twitter in 2009, when the company faced a legal case for damage to someone’s reputation for a Twitter account impersonating them. The mark was a way for Twitter to protect itself and its users against such instances in the future.

 

The blue tick has strayed far from that purpose and become something of an online status symbol – if one of dubious merit. Yet its origins should mean that red flags start flying in response to any plan to make it something that can be charged for (the Verge has reported that Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, is considering making users pay up to $20 a month to keep it). Almost no financial model that combines status with verification can end well.

 

The first option is that verification remains for a particular cadre of “notable” users, with a threshold roughly similar to where it is set now. As it stands, around 300,000 accounts – less than 0.2 per cent of Twitter’s active users – are verified, and accounts have to meet a set of standards to be eligible for this.

 

If you keep the eligibility to keep your blue tick tight but require users to pay for it many simply won’t bother, but even if a sizeable fraction did, the revenue is negligible. If as many as one in five current blue ticks paid $20 a month that would raise just under $15 million a year for Twitter. That might sound like decent money, but Twitter’s current revenues (mostly from advertising) are $5 billion a year. Musk’s apparent plan would generate about 30 hours’ worth of annual revenue.

 

The downsides would be considerable. Without a free way for notable accounts to confirm they were real, it would be easier for fake accounts posing as banks, government agencies or notable people to fool innocent users and spread fake news – opening Twitter up to far more moderation (itself very costly) and to lawsuits (also costly).

 

One way to increase the revenue potential would be to open up verification to a much bigger pool of users, but while the revenue could be higher the risks are higher too. If the criteria for checking identity are dropped, verification could become a spammer or a hacker’s paradise.

 

All of this is mere detail, though, compared with the bigger problem: the Twitter Elon Musk has inherited is one that is failing to engage its most active users. These are people defined by Twitter as posting a mere three to four times a week and the network is losing them already. This is a terrible time to ask people for money.

 

When it comes to its most active users, generally those who are verified, Twitter is useless for monetisation for creators: it has yet to build a Patreon- or Substack-type product and doesn’t share advertising revenue. Having tens of thousands of followers on YouTube or Instagram makes you an income. Having tens of thousands of followers on Twitter makes you a target.

 

Musk-era Twitter risks &^%$ off the users it depends on, making its service worse, and damaging already shaky advertiser confidence around brand safety and image – for a scheme that will raise paltry revenue. But Elon Musk being Elon Musk, he may well do it anyway.

 

As for me, Musk is welcome to my tick. I’m fond of it, I’ve forgotten what it’s like not to have one, but I don’t think it measurably changes my online experience, which is what it is because of my follower count more than anything else. Musk can come and take my tick from my warm, living hands. Let’s see how the other half lives.

Edited November 11, 2022 by ZeroHour

[Ditto]

I've just been catching up with the reports from those losing their jobs with Twitter. It's brutal, very sad and probably isn't following redundancy laws. I've been with a couple of companies where significant redundancies were made, but I have always dodged the bullet. Forced linear ranking of your own team, knowing putting together that list, those at the lower end are likely to be on the hit list - not a pleasant task.

 

I've been in an office where colleagues can't login, assume they've left caps-lock on, only for the phone to ring and they disappear in to an office for a few minutes, only to return with a cardboard box, some in tears, to say a brief farewell to colleagues as they are escorted to the front door by security. Horribly it has always been at this end of the year, just before Xmas.

 

If anyone has friends, family or other caught up in this, they have my sympathies. However, almost every colleague that I kept in contact, who had that horrible experience, went on to new and invariably better jobs, so stay positive and be optimistic .

[mavhc]

No one likes getting rid of people they work with, that's why most companies employ too many people

[6Foot2]

Link: Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back - Bloomberg

 

Twitter Inc., after laying off roughly half the company on Friday following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition, is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return.

 

Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.

 

Twitter cut close to 3,700 people this week via email as a way to trim costs following Musk’s acquisition, which closed in late October. Many employees learned they lost their job after their access to company-wide systems, like email and Slack, were suddenly suspended. The requests for employees to return demonstrate how rushed and chaotic the process was...

[Theblacksheep]

No one likes getting rid of people they work with, that's why most companies employ too many people

 

You seriously think the problem with twitter was too many people employed?

[mavhc]

It was losing money, so yes

[supportman]

You seriously think the problem with twitter was too many people employed?

 

Yeh... I saw a great comment on reddit from someone recently that said it took 40 engineers, legal, ethics, QA, infra and many months to create the edit button for twitter blue.

 

If that's not bloat, I don't know what is

 

To be fair, they are a large company with millions of users, but it does show how much companies slow down when they become bloated with staff.

[Theblacksheep]

Yeh... I saw a great comment on reddit from someone recently that said it took 40 engineers, legal, ethics, QA, infra and many months to create the edit button for twitter blue.

 

If that's not bloat, I don't know what is

 

To be fair, they are a large company with millions of users, but it does show how much companies slow down when they become bloated with staff.

 

Sack the QA team and legal: Day 1 someone posts up a message with 60k likes then edits it to an racial slur or porn.

 

You have a huge legal problem on your hands. Perceived simple solutions are so much more complex with scale.

 

He has been posting quotes from neo-nazis, so atleast I can understand how much of a mess it will be going forward.

[jthompson]

Maybe Musk's plan is to reduce Twitter in size enough for it to fit on a rocket that can be fired into the Sun?

[6Foot2]

Similar news:

 

Link: Facebook parent Meta lays off workers as it faces competition from TikTok - The Washington Post

[mavhc]

Everyone's cutting back based on the forthcoming recession. Musk's view is keep the people who work the hardest and want to change the world, if you prefer a cushy job go somewhere else. It's worked for him in the past, and it pays well. The whole point of software is to make the computer do the work for you.

 

Instagram was originally 2 people

[Dan2025]

Everyone's cutting back based on the forthcoming recession. Musk's view is keep the people who work the hardest and want to change the world, if you prefer a cushy job go somewhere else. It's worked for him in the past, and it pays well. The whole point of software is to make the computer do the work for you.

 

Instagram was originally 2 people

 

 

It was already part of the plan to cut staff prior to Musk but sacking half the work force with comical metrics to decide who stays & who goes a week into buying. That's not going to motivate those that survived, especially now many are being begged back due to being essential to certain projects.

 

Him & Trump are so alike, both narcassists & manchilds.

[mavhc]

Many? Or 20?

[supportman]

It was already part of the plan to cut staff prior to Musk but sacking half the work force with comical metrics to decide who stays & who goes a week into buying. That's not going to motivate those that survived, especially now many are being begged back due to being essential to certain projects.

 

Him & Trump are so alike, both narcassists & manchilds.

 

Musk is autistic, well aspergic, but I don't think he's either of the above. Nothing like Trump anyway.

 

Some of the features he's proposed for Twitter sound awesome, and his analysis of the company and its problems has been spot on as far as I can see.

 

The best thing is he's said he didn't buy it to make money, just to fix what he feels is broken. Hopefully in a few years people will look back and agree but it takes time.

 

Both Tesla and SpaceX were ridiculed and dismissed at first.

Edited November 9, 2022 by supportman

[jthompson]

I watched the recent 3-part BBC doc about Musk, and found that really interesting. One quote of his that sticks out is him describing how being the US President is like being the captain of a really big ship, but with a tiny rudder. His preference, on the other hand, was to have an organisation be as small and lean as it can be whilst still achiving its aims. Also, he views everyone in an organisation as being a vector, and if any of those vectors aren't perfectly aligned with the organisation as a whole, then they're out. Any kind of negativity or contrary attitude in a meeting, for instance, and they'd be out. Interesting stuff.

[JATSO]

In the aftermath he dumped 4$b of Tesla shares, the value of Tesla has dropped nearly 50% in the last year.

Its not all a golden touch for Musk at the moment but you never know.

[Ironside]

Musk is autistic, well aspergic, but I don't think he's either of the above. Nothing like Trump anyway.

 

Some of the features he's proposed for Twitter sound awesome, and his analysis of the company and its problems has been spot on as far as I can see.

 

The best thing is he's said he didn't buy it to make money, just to fix what he feels is broken. Hopefully in a few years people will look back and agree but it takes time.

 

Both Tesla and SpaceX were ridiculed and dismissed at first.

 

I'm autistic too, but I don't go around tweeting conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi

[supportman]

I'm autistic too, but I don't go around tweeting conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi

 

I'm guessing a fair few of us are on these forums

 

But i'm sure you know already that there is a spectrum for these things.

 

It doesn't excuse all his behavior, but it does explain a lot, particularly the lack of empathy.

 

Allegedly Einstein was also Aspergic and a pain in the ass to work with. Oh if only we had Twitter back then lol

[mavhc]

Fun how you can say "dumped" instead of "sold" to make it sound worse.

 

You knew he was going to sell the shares to pay for Twitter, it's not a surprise. Nor is it a surprise that the stock goes down in price due to excess supply.

 

It's up 853% in the past 5 years, so no real problem, unless you cherry pick an exact date when it's at the highest point ever.

[JATSO]

Fun how you can say "dumped" instead of "sold" to make it sound worse.

 

You knew he was going to sell the shares to pay for Twitter, it's not a surprise. Nor is it a surprise that the stock goes down in price due to excess supply.

 

It's up 853% in the past 5 years, so no real problem, unless you cherry pick an exact date when it's at the highest point ever.

 

Dumped because he cashed in some 16$b of Tesla earlier this year, only up 853% if you were in 5 years ago, but suddenly worth only 50% of that value today.

 

He has sold a lot of Tesla in the past year almost 20$b so I would say "dumped" as he hasn't bought any back. (Yet)

He's shrewd and might possibly buy them back, after he has watched the price fall further, unless he spends it all keeping Twitter afloat.