After many escapades, Elon Musk pays Twitter
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has become the owner of Twitter.
REUTERS - ADREES LATIF
Text by: Thomas Bourdeau Follow
6 mins
44 billion dollars is the price to pay to become the boss of the most influential social network on the planet.
After some hesitation, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, bought himself this Friday, October 28, the blue bird messaging service.
This acquisition heralds profound changes for Twitter.
The questions are numerous and the answers of the new boss are expected, even feared.
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"
The bird is released
“Tweeted Elon Musk, after having bought, for 44 billion dollars, the social network with the logo has the blue bird.
It had been months since this takeover had turned into a real saga with multiple twists, commitments and denials.
A substantial Wikipedia page has even been devoted to all of these economic and human adventures.
Since the announcement of the billionaire at the end of April of an acquisition offer of 44 billion dollars, the takeover operation dragged on.
The offer had been reluctantly accepted by Twitter, but Elon Musk sought to unilaterally withdraw from it in early July.
He accused the company of lying to him about its fight against automated accounts and spam.
The company's board of directors took legal action and Elon Musk had until
until Friday to conclude the acquisition of the social network, failing which a trial could take place in November.
Trial that the billionaire was legally certain to lose.
He finally offered to complete the transaction at the price initially agreed.
Elon Musk continued his schoolboy humor
On Wednesday, the entrepreneur arrived at the headquarters of the social network with a sink in his hands.
"
Let that sink in
" is an expression that means taking the time to store information in order to better understand it.
Literally translated, this sentence also says “
let this sink in
”.
Elon Musk therefore continued, in real life, his schoolboy humor.
He even renamed himself
Chef Twit
that day on his Twitter profile (
twit
also means moron in English).
Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!
pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
“Our platform must be warm and welcoming for all
”
End of the joke: the new boss, upon his arrival, fired CEO Parag Agrawal (a layoff worth tens of millions of dollars).
Just like two other executives, chief financial officer Ned Segal and head of legal affairs Vijaya Gadde.
He had planned to lay off 75% of Twitter's 7,500 employees, according to the
Washington Post
, but when he arrived at the premises, Elon Musk denied it and tried to reassure the employees.
An employee, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, calculated that more than 700 employees had left the Californian group since June.
“Trying to help humanity”
An avid user of Twitter, with more than 110 million subscribers, Elon Musk posts economic, political and humorous, even impulsive messages.
He has a behavior on the network that can be described as a troll that delights his fans and dismays his detractors.
This acquisition portends an unstable new chapter for a platform that is at the heart of the world's political and media life.
Twitter has become a formidable diplomatic tool, its influence on the distribution of information, its weight on the dissemination of ideas is considerable.
This takeover therefore worries a large part of Twitter employees, but also many users and NGOs seeking to better fight against abuse, harassment and misinformation.
For his part, Elon Musk assures that he did not initiate the operation because it
easy
” or “
to make money
” but to “
try to help humanity
” (...) “
In addition to respecting the laws, our platform must be warm and welcoming for all.
Thierry Breton, European Commissioner, replied: “
In Europe, the bird will fly according to our European rules.
»
👋 @elonmusk
In Europe, the bird will fly by our 🇪🇺 rules.#DSA https://t.co/95W3qzYsal
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 28, 2022
The beginning of a new era for Twitter
The richest man in the world presents himself as an ardent defender of freedom of expression and wants to relax content moderation.
It seems to open the door to a return of Donald Trump to the network since his ouster at the time of the Capitol attack.
During a question and answer session with employees of the San Francisco company, the businessman had stressed that he aimed to reach one billion users - instead of the current 230 million - and to diversify sources of income.
He also wants to strengthen the fight against spam.
It is therefore the beginning of a new era for Twitter, headed by a man with disruptive ideas as they say in Silicon Valley.
He has thus defended for several months his vision of an all-purpose application like WeChat in China.
This messaging would be called X, from the domain name X .com from the online bank founded years ago by the billionaire, which later became PayPal.
X would offer functionalities as diverse as content sharing, gaming, means of payment, messaging, a social network, etc.
🎶 let the good times roll 🎶
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
Elon Musk
was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971, to an engineer father and a model mother.
He was educated in Canada and then in the United States.
He became the richest man in the world with an estimated fortune of around $221 billion, mostly thanks to Tesla.
He uses it to finance his various personal adventures.
The extravagant, bitcoin-loving entrepreneur seeks to save humanity with electric cars, rockets, tunnels and brain implants.
Tesla, long in deficit, is now a huge industrial and financial success, with a record profit of 5.5 billion dollars in 2021 and an immense market valuation (710 billion dollars), which weighs four times that of Toyota, the world's largest manufacturer. .
From 2017 to 2019, the company was “
constantly on the brink of bankruptcy.
(...) I lived in the factory in Fremont, California, I slept on the floor so that the team could see that I was not in my ivory tower.
»
"Radical Right-Libertarian Style"
Megalomaniac, workaholic, Elon Musk gives, over the course of his tweets, a glimpse of his personality.
A man concerned about his image, a rebellious boss, a lover of verbal jousts and anti-politically correct provocations.
“
His libertarian style has a bit of a radical right in it
,” according to Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates.
On Twitter, he recently delivered his advice to end the war in Ukraine - an opinion not really to kyiv's liking -.
He also challenged Vladimir Putin to a duel.
In May 2021, he revealed he had Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.
Divorced three times, Mr. Musk is the father of ten children.
The private life section on his Wikipedia page is as crisp as that concerning his takeover of Twitter.
A portrait also in Today the economy
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