Tesla CEO Elon Musk is known for providing frequent tweets about his business interests, cryptocurrencies, politics, and life in general, but today it looks like he's fulfilling one of his biggest ideas.
The social media platform tweeted that it had accepted Musk's
offer to acquire the publicly traded company at $54.20/share, valuing it at $44 billion.
The company issued a press release shortly after the news
broke that Twitter's stock trading had halted, confirming that Musk's offer to take the social network private was accepted.
“Twitter's Independent Board Chair Bret Taylor emphasized
value, certainty, and financing in evaluating Elon Musk's proposal,” he said of the deal.
"We believe Twitter's stockholders will benefit from the
proposed deal because it will perform well in terms of cash premiums."
The company was already doing most of Musk's ideas for
optimizing Twitter prior to his dramatic intervention, such as adding products, fighting spam, and opening up its algorithms.
However, Musk reiterated that "free speech" is the key to
twitter's future in a press release.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” - elon musk
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the
product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spambots, and authenticating all humans.
Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working
with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
"Authenticating all humans" is not clear from Musk's statement
- is that just about ridding the platform of spammy bots or a stricter stance on automated accounts?
The latter situation would certainly alter Twitter's status as
a social network with useful and occasionally delightful bot accounts.
Until Twitter resolves its remaining matters, the deal isn't
final. The board approved the deal unanimously, and it's expected to close this year pending shareholder and regulatory approvals.
Even considering the size of the deal, the Twitter/Musk
acquisition dance has been a quick one.
Musk first took to Twitter a few months ago to speak out
against social networks and Twitter itself, until Twitter announced on April 4 that Musk had indeed bought a significant stake in the company - 9.2% of shares.
After that, Musk held a seat on the board before it was pulled
away.
In response to what they thought was obvious manipulation of
share prices, shareholders sued Musk. And in true Musk style, his response was… I’ll buy the entire platform.
When the board balked, the poison pill quickly made its way
viral in corporate tech news.
It wasn’t until Musk went on to explain exactly how he will
finance the acquisition that the board decided that maybe this guy was for real.
I look forward to seeing what that means for Twitter as a
business. As well as figuring out what Musk's agenda may be, it will be interesting to see what his intentions may be.
It's not exactly novel for moguls to acquire media properties
- Where else do you go as the world's wealthiest person and you’ve already got the yachts, Mansions, jets etc.. I know let’s buy Twitter
As a longtime Twitter user, Musk is likely to approach this
more as a vanity project for investors rather than a purely financial move.
His ideas are plentiful.
It's impossible not to admit that he's smart, even if you
don't like him.
Twitter looks set to grow and become a major player in the
internet economy.
If he has already decided to use Twitter for this purpose, he
may have already discovered that it's much more fun as an expensive toy and a platform to further his interests (which is, for all intents and purposes, everything we know about Twitter so far).
Regardless, if his wishes are to be fulfilled he will have a
mouthpiece that he can control according to his preferences.
