WE MUSK TALK ABOUT GOINGS ON AT TWITTER
What is happening at Twitter, you might well ask? In 10 days we’ve seen maverick billionaire and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk become the company’s largest shareholder, agree to join the board, suggest several somewhat outlandish changes to the service, then decide against joining the board after all…
So, what does it all mean?
Musk is an avid user of Twitter, occasionally getting into trouble with controversial tweets. He’s also criticised the company for what he says is a stifling of free speech.
The current story began, though, when Musk revealed he’d bought around a 9% share in
Twitter for somewhere in the region of $2.8bn. The day after, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal revealed Musk had been offered, and had accepted, a seat on the company’s board.
There were then a few Tweets from Musk about things he felt the company should do, like adding an edit feature so people could change tweets after posting them. A criticism of Twitter’s Blue subscription service was also posted by Musk in which he questioned its value and the features it offers.
Then, in a surprise twist no one saw coming, Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not be joining the board after all.
Although Agrawal said it was Musk’s decision not to take up the offer, in a short statement he referred to the offer of a board seat being conditional on “background checks”.
The offer of a seat on the board was clearly an attempt by Twitter to limit Musk’s options – he would have to behave in a certain way and would have been limited in just how much stock in the company he could buy. On the outside, he can do and say what he likes and can buy as much stock in the company as he wants – while $2.8bn is an unimaginable amount of money for most of us, it’s pocket change for Musk. He has enough money to buy Twitter many times over.
So what happens next? Musk is such an unpredictable character that anything is possible – from nothing at all, to a takeover bid.
If Musk’s past is anything to go by, though, this won’t be the end of this particular story and those in the Twitter boardroom will be bracing themselves for whatever comes next.