After months of lawsuits and controversy, Elon Musk now owns Twitter. Musk has finally completed his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform co-founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006.
Musk also began cleaning house with reports from The New York Times stating that Elon fired at least four top executives at the company, including former CEO Parag Agarwal and CFO Ned Segal. An unknown source told the The New York Times that one of those people had to be escorted out of Twitter’s office.
What Next For Twitter?
This blockbuster purchase of the social media service leaves Twitter on an uncertain course as it enters a new era. Elon Musk has said that he wants to make the platform a more freewheeling place for all types of commentary. He even promised to lift the permanent ban on former US President Donald J. Trump.
“There could be real-world consequences to his leadership to the extent that world leaders see they have this space and it’s unmoderated, they could push to see how far they can go” said- David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Musk has also promised other changes at Twitter, including new leadership, job cuts and the pursuit of new ways to make money. Currently, Twitter has an employee base of more than 7,500 people but has been facing difficulties consistently growing its advertising-based business and attracting new users.
A few weeks ago Elon Musk said that Twitter would be an “everything app”, a Super App of some sorts to compete with popular Asian platforms like WeChat.
“If you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat. It does everything. It’s sort of like Twitter plus PayPal plus a whole bunch of things all rolled into one, with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app, and we don’t have anything like that outside of China” Elon Musk had commented.
Elon Musk has also promised Twitter investors an annual revenue of $26.4 billion by 2028. He also aims to increase the user count to 930 million in the next five to six years.
