The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post report that Elon Musk has started his takeover of Twitter after months of legal upheaval. He fired the company’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, the chief financial officer, Ned Segal, and other key executives as his first action.
Just before a Friday deadline to consummate the acquisition, Musk assumes control. This week, he visited the San Francisco headquarters of Twitter and chatted with staff members there. Additionally, according to Bloomberg, he apparently hired some Tesla engineers to “evaluate” Twitter’s code.
The agreement’s conclusion will put an end to the protracted legal dispute that has gripped Twitter since Musk first made a $44 billion buyout offer in April before declaring the deal was “on hold” a few weeks later. Musk claimed worries about the volume of bots and fraudulent accounts on the network as the reason he chose not to conduct due diligence prior to making his offer. Later, Twitter’s legal team claimed that the bot problem was really a “pretext” for him to break the agreement.
The deal will be finalized, but the commotion inside Twitter won’t be. At least four executives have previously been sacked by Musk, who has argued with Agrawal and criticized Twitter’s leadership, including Sean Edgett, the company’s chief operating officer, and Vijaya Gadde, the company’s top policy official.
How is Elon Musk planning to manage the social media platform?
Musk has made it apparent that he plans to make further significant changes to the social media company by changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit.” He has expressed his desire to loosen Twitter’s moderation guidelines and his distaste for indefinite suspensions in both public appearances and private correspondence. More layoffs are apparently inevitable, though he has assured workers that the reductions won’t reach 75%.
Under Musk’s direction, the company’s core service might also undergo significant modification. Musk has stated that he wants to “open source” Twitter’s algorithm so that users may better understand its suggestions, in addition to relaxing the platform’s moderation guidelines.
He has also made an effort to reassure sponsors that he does not want Twitter to be a “free-for-all hellscape” and that it should instead be the “most respected advertising platform in the world.” Sarah Personette, COO of Twitter, stated that she had a “wonderful discussion” with Elon Musk.
Musk is expected to explore for methods to boost non-advertising revenue as he frequently expresses his ambition for Twitter to “be an accelerant to producing X, the everything app” similar to WeChat in China. He has suggested modifications to Twitter Blue and has put out the notion of charging businesses for tweet embeds.
