I really wanted to not include Elon Musk in this section of the newsletter yet again, but the man just keeps generating drama.
The latest episode in his rollercoaster of a Twitter acquisition came as this week’s Geekout was being finished off today. The deal’s on hold! In a tweet, Musk said it was “temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users”.
Musk seems to believe the percentage may be higher. Does he want to negotiate a cheaper price? It’s easy to assume he might be looking for a way out of the deal, though. The
collapse in tech stocks is the latest spanner in the works making the acquisition far more painful for Musk than it seemed a few weeks ago. He’s already facing an
SEC investigation over his delayed disclosure of his stock purchase.
Even before the deal was put on hold, Musk had generated plenty of drama both inside and outside Twitter this week.
His announcement that Twitter under his control would
allow Donald Trump back generate plenty of headlines, as all the old arguments about whether or not you can ban such a notable figure from social media (or even permanently ban anyone) came rushing back to the surface. There’s no one right answer to any of this, but there’s no doubt Trump returning (if he wanted to) would change the vibe of the platform - and many would say for the worse.
And the vibe
inside Twitter certainly changed too, as Parag Agrawal—keeping the CEO seat warm until Musk (maybe) arrives—announced two well-liked execs were leaving the company. In
a memo to staff, he said “it’s critical to have the right leaders at the right time”. It quickly emerged that Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck
had been fired.
In a tweet, Beykpour said Agrawal wants to take the consumer product team “
in a different direction”. Given Beykpour led the recent period of rapid product innovation at Twitter, we could be facing a distinct change at Twitter, likely in the direction Musk wants to go.
Here’s a reminder of the changes the billionaire has suggested. This week, it emerged he has set some
ambitious targets for the company to double revenue, largely through subscriptions. Although the idea that Twitter really could get 69
(nice!) million paying Blue subscribers
ever seems a stretch.
Meanwhile, the idea that a Musk-owned Twitter would become a haven for unfettered free speech looked increasingly flawed. Musk seemed to be
on the same page as EU regulators on user safety measures, and is increasingly qualifying his idea that all legal speech should be allowed as he
gradually learns the lessons content moderators have been learning for years.
