South African businessman Elon Musk hasn’t tweeted anything about his new participation on Twitter, which to an avid user of the platform seems somewhat ironic.
Perhaps that’s because the 9.2% of the company he now owns is described as “passive equity,” although people who know Musk don’t expect this scenario to stay that way for long.
His first move was to launch a poll — asking if people want an edit button, a long-requested tool, and maybe something he personally needs.
The new announcement that he will join Twitter’s board comes as no surprise.
In a message on Tuesday, Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal said that “through conversations with Elon over the past few weeks, it has become clear to us that he would bring great value to our board.”
Agrawal added that “as a passionate believer and intense critic” of the service, Musk is “exactly what we need”.
Later, Musk responded by saying he was looking forward to making changes to the social media giant.
Musk’s 9.2% stake in the social media company may seem small, but Dan Ives of analytics firm Wedbush describes it as “eye-popping” — the percentage equates to 73.5 million shares of the network. Social.
Shares on the platform soared after the deal was revealed on Monday that the Tesla founder had become the company’s biggest shareholder — meaning the stake has already grown in value and is now worth more than $3 billion.
Musk’s shareholding is four times that of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as the company’s chief executive in November.
Ives believes the South African billionaire now has his eyes firmly on Twitter, and his significant stake will lead him to push for an active role in running the company.
“We hope that this passive participation is just the beginning of broader conversations with Twitter’s board and management that could lead to active participation and a potentially more aggressive ownership role for Twitter,” he said.
Musk has a love-hate relationship with Twitter. He is a frequent user, with more than 80 million followers — and his interactions on the social network often generate controversy.
The platform will need to suit Musk’s impulsive personality. Last year, he asked whether he should sell 10% of his shares in his electric car company Tesla. Twitter users said “yes”. That led Musk to sell about $5 billion worth of company stock in November.
Months earlier, he had offered to sign a check for $6 billion if the World Food Program (WFP) explained how the money would be used to solve hunger around the world. The statement followed a statement made by the head of the UN program.
But tweeting also got Musk in trouble. A 2018 post about Tesla stock led to an investigation by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the US federal financial market watchdog. The investigation ended with a settlement that required the company’s lawyers to pre-approve certain of Musk’s tweets. It is unclear whether this actually happens.
Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal reports that Twitter’s stock filings with the SEC, which under normal circumstances would include a line saying he does not intend to influence the direction of the company, came with the “not applicable” remark.
The timing of the deal has also raised questions and could once again put Musk at odds with financial regulators.
His investment in Twitter was recorded on March 14, but it had not been announced until this week. United States securities law requires disclosure within 10 days of acquiring 5% of a company.
Freedom of expression
Musk uses Twitter not only as a barometer for how he runs his own companies, but increasingly as a measure of the temperature of the United States.
Last month, after submitting his investment to the SEC — but before his stake became public knowledge — he asked users whether they believed free speech was essential to a functioning democracy and whether Twitter believed in that principle. .
Cornell University assistant professor Alexandra Cirone thinks this is evidence that Musk can use his newfound membership “to try to influence Twitter practices” and for “more active play in the social media ecosystem.”
But others see more immediate problems with their reflections.
Howard Fischer, a partner at law firm Moses & Singer, told Reuters news agency that as he had already bought a stake in Twitter, these questions could be seen as a form of market manipulation. “I suspect that the SEC will investigate very closely whether these messages could bring up allegations of manipulation,” he said.
Agrawal seems to be clearly watching Musk’s every move. In response to the edit button poll, which currently has 2.6 million responses, he urged voters to do so “carefully”.
“The consequences of this research will be important,” he said, repeating the exact same words Musk used after launching his free speech research on Twitter.
Jack Dorsey has always rejected the idea of ​​the edit button, and critics point out that the tool could allow people to fundamentally change the meaning of tweets after they have been shared.
It would be a big change for Twitter to include this tool, and Musk is clearly interested in being a part of that conversation.
For a while last month, it looked like Musk intended to build a new social media platform as a rival of sorts to Twitter.
Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter in January 2021 after the Capitol riots, announced last fall that he was launching his own social network — dubbed Truth Social — to “confront the tyranny of big tech,” he said.
But six weeks after the platform’s launch, there’s still a waiting list of 1.5 million people who still can’t use it. The system was touted as a disaster by Joshua Tucker, director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University.
According to Reuters, two top executives have resigned after the rocky launch.
For those with shares in Musk’s many other businesses — Space X, Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company — there will undoubtedly be relief that he has not followed Trump’s path.
But there will also be concerns that the billionaire will view Twitter as something of a passion that distracts him from the serious business of running his established companies.
And that’s not to mention the questions that can now be raised about the SEC’s Twitter deal.
Social media expert Casey Newton points out that this isn’t the first time another major tech company has set its sights on Twitter. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer once bought a 4% stake in the company “and essentially did nothing with it,” he writes.
But he also claims that Ballmer never used Twitter the way Musk does, “cheerfully, annoyingly and constantly.”
And it seems most likely from this Twitter account that Musk will let the world know what he intends to do with the famous platform.
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