- Elon Musk has finally assumed command of Twitter after pressing pause and backing out of the infamous deal in July.
- Musk posted a video of himself entering the Twitter headquarters with a sink in his hand to his account.
- He promises to introduce radical changes to the platform and began by firing CEO Parag Agarwal today among other top brass.
On April 14th, historically, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, moved to acquire one of the world’s leading microblogging social media platforms, Twitter.
Musk, who offered approximately 54.20 US dollars for a share, managed to buy out the company for USD 44 billion as the firm accepted the deal on April 25th.
But then in an unsurprising turn of events involving the impulsive billionaire things went south pretty much sooner than expected.
The sequelae of events
As soon as the details of Musk’s Twitter deal went public, he took to Twitter itself to announce his desire to radically change the social media platform’s narrative as he described the app as a “de facto town square”. A move which was also applauded by Twitter ex-CEO Jack Dorsey.
Then came the infamous bot bargain. In a press conference in Miami, Musk stated that he does not believe these “official” figures provided by Twitter CEO and is confident of the fact that Twitter Bots are significantly much larger in number and operation.
He even claimed that Twitter uses a complex methodology to calculate bot accounts which may not be completely accurate either and hence data appears distorted. He exclaimed he wishes to crack down on bots involved in cryptocurrency scams, spreading false information, and so on.
Thus the Twitter deal was halted until Musk received satisfactory clarification on the bot issue. Musk even came up with the “perfect plan” to figure out the “actual” number of fake accounts despite Twitter’s official report. And that was to count them individually!
However, after a massive public backlash regarding the illogical solution including Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who pointed out that the billionaire’s approach isn’t feasible at all, the worst came true.
Twitter vs Musk
On 8th July, Musk notified the SEC that he had terminated his painfully drawn-out effort to buy Twitter reportedly claiming “material breach of multiple provisions of the Agreement” as the cause.
Twitter in turn sued Musk for his impulsive decision and in an official brief promised that it intended to fight in court till he paid them what was due.
Meanwhile, the two sides faced off in lengthy court filings, private messages, and bitter public spats on Twitter. In one such exchange, Mr. Musk responded to Twitter boss Parag Agrawal with an emoji for fecal matter.
Coming back home
The trial, which was scheduled to go to trial on 17 October, didn’t see the light of day as in a letter, attorneys for Mr. Musk said he intended to move ahead to complete the transaction, pending receipt of the financing and an end of the legal fight.
The apparent win for Twitter sent its shares soaring more than 20% to more than $52 apiece. Later on, Mr. Musk wrote in a tweet: “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”.
And now finally after months-long of wondering “will he or wouldn’t he?” The Twitter deal has seemed to come to an amicable ending.
Earlier on Wednesday Twitter Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland sent out an email to notify employees that Musk would be in the building sometime this week. And so he rightly did.
After the billionaire was ordered to finalize the deal by Friday of this week at 5:00 pm, he paid a visit to the firm’s headquarters on October 26th. In a video Elon Musk released himself, he is seen entering the Twitter headquarters carrying a sink.
This may be his way of saying he is now at the helm of Twitter. The infamous sink video was also paired with the firing of Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal.
Immediately after assuming command Musk fired a bunch of Twitter employees including Agrawal, Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy, and trust; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and Sean Edgett, who has been general counsel at Twitter since 2012.
According to employees who wished to stay anonymous, Edgett had to be escorted out of the headquarters building after his firing.
While Twitter is bracing for a major disruption in its policies of functioning, the employees are scared about layoffs. There have been rumors of Musk wanting to replace 75 percent of the present workforce.
Between bringing ex-US president Donald Trump back to the platform and introducing radical changes, it will be scandal worthy to note what Musk does indeed.
