The “front page of news” has a new owner, after Musk’s outrageous $44-billion buyout “best and final” offer was first refused by Twitter’s board last week, then agreed on 25 April. It has been a frantic three weeks, since Musk’s announcement that he’d bought 9.2% for $2.9-billion on 4 April.
At the heart of the deal is the price Musk offered per share – $54.20 – which is a joke itself, referencing the 420 marijuana meme that 4.20pm is a good time to smoke a joint. It’s the same joke that Musk used when he controversially tweeted he had “secured funding” to take Tesla private – for which Tesla and Musk were fined $20-million each by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.Twitter has many, many problems that aren’t the easiest of problems to solve.
He might be right that advertising is part of the problem at Twitter, but how else can it make money? Expecting people to start paying for something that has previously been free has never worked in other circumstances, and is unlikely to work as a new business model for Twitter. Musk will get a rude awakening, I suspect, when he discovers how toxic and problematic content moderation is.