After months of tedious back and forth, what people almost deemed as impossible happened – Tesla owner and CEO Elon Musk is now the new Twitter-in-chief. Despite the excessive turmoil Musk’s sudden campaign has already caused, part of his initial decrees as the new Twitter head to fire its top executives, including current CEO Parag Agrawal and Finance Chief Ned Segel.
Oi! Wut?!
The drama that ensued merely weeks after Musk announced his takeover plans could be summarized in one word: ‘ugly’. This isn’t even an exaggeration – Twitter and Musk went at it so much that things eventually escalated to Twitter taking legal action against Musk and Co., which resulted in the billionaire pursuing his original goal to buy out Twitter, although the initial results are already a bit dull; not the best start.
Long story short, A Delaware Chancery Court judge eventually ruled that Musk had until October 28 to either push through with the deal or head to court, which Musk obliged with, hence the present circumstances. Despite agreeing to the original purchase conditions, it’s still unclear how exactly Musk will finance the deal. Earlier this year, he did secure some debt financing from a couple of investor banks, Musk also managed to acquire the support of some high-profile investors, including Venture Capital firms and big tech CEOs. Crypto exchange company Binance, one of Musk’s original backers for this deal, confirmed to CNBC last Friday that it’s an equity investor for his takeover.
As per Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao:
“We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter. We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”
Web3.0 is a tech term the industry has currently doubled down on to refer to the next generation of the internet. On Thursday, Musk wrote a message reassuring advertisers that social messaging services wouldn’t devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”. Well, so far so bad. Musk further reiterated in the same message saying that “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far-right wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.” Ironic how after he let these statements loose, the use of the N-word has risen by as much as 500x, along with an increase in the frequency of other slurs and derogatory statements.
The Wrap
To ‘mark’ his entry, Musk arrived at Twitter HQ earlier this week carrying a sink, documenting the event by saying “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”. Not the grandest of entries, but it certainly leaves an impact. Right now, it’s still unclear how much of an impact on Twitter Musk’s leadership will have, but some of the initial observations and subsequent backlash suggest that Twitter should prepare for rougher waves as it works to stabilize itself under new leadership and, most likely, a major structural shift.
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