Elon Musk in ‘Definitive Agreement’ to Acquire Twitter for $44 Billion
However, it is “subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.”
Twitter announced it is in a “definitive agreement” with Elon Musk.
Musk will acquire the platform for $54.20 a share in cash and it will become a private company:
Bret Taylor, Twitter’s Independent Board Chair, said, “The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”
Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, said, “Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
The Board of Directors anonymously approved the transaction. However, it is “subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.”
Musk is already all over Twitter:
Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important. https://t.co/5iNTtJoEHf
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 25, 2022
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Comments
not meaning to sound rude here but he be insane
with ALL capital letters
if I had 44 f-kng billion to spare, I’d just keep it
and it is not like Twitter will get any better for it
insane /sigh
Like the old mastercard commercials.
Price of Twitter? 44 Billion
Price of Lefty Loons losing their collective mind? Priceless.
What do you even do with $44 billion? There’s only so much you can use it for, and it’s not like you can take it with you when you go. Musk so far sounds pretty serious about actually fixing Twitter, and he doesn’t throw money away frivolously. He likely thinks its a good investment if he can turn it into a free speech platform.
I recently watched an interview show with him on (maybe it was Joe Rogan, can’t recall the host); anyway, Musk stated that he wants Twitter because he believes it’s important to have a free speech outlet, it’s important to the American Republic and to the global community and to all of humanity (he’s not a rightie by any stretch of the imagination). He said he’s not doing it to make money and that he can afford it (he can, many times over). His tweet about pissing off the farthest left and the farthest right is probably key to what happens next.
the lib cries that the end of the world has come – the coming entertainment from libs going nuts is going to be as priceless as it will be enjoyable
We will have a tsunami of meme-able moments in the days to come.
Half the fun is reading all of the comments and predictions on the previous thread.
Will Twitter get any better, or approach being worth using? Who knows, I don’t really care that much. But watching the libtarded idiots running around like their hair is on fire at the very thought of free speech? That’s some comedy gold there.
Everybody in the whole wide world is happy now—except Parag Algrawal. He’s a goner.
He can console himself with the tens of millions he’ll make selling his Twitter stock to Elon. Also, his golden parachute is reported to be $42 million.
But he’ll have zero power which is one of the worst things that can happen to a Mercedes Marxist.
That’s an awful lot of money.c how in The world will he make it back?
By looking under his sofa cushions?
Twitter is a highly profitable platform. Ad revenue and margins are pretty solid. Gross margin is above 60%.
Elon says Twitter relies too much on ads. He wants to change that.
This is far from a done deal.
Yeah, I had heard Musk’s critique about ads. But, even with subscriptions as a potential revenue source, ad revenue is going to remain the backbone of Twitter’s revenue for the foreseeable future. It’s just the reality of the social media business model and that’s not going to immediately change under Musk’s ownership.
I think he just wants a sub option for people to pay not to have ads, for the non-payers, he wants them to be less intrusive and skeevy.
To start, the blue checks will have to pay a monthly fee for their blue check.
Amazing. The entertainment value of watching the predictably, perennially histrionic, infantile, narcissistic and hysterical Dumb-o-crat toddlers engaged in their usual unhinged rants and contrived outrage is priceless.
Don’t worry, Dumb-o-crats — you still control 99.99% of all schools, industrial sectors, courts, corporate boardrooms, media companies and platforms.
One small victory for free speech and a marketplace of ideas uncontrolled by the totalitarian Left, and, the Dumb-o-crats go nuts. They can’t countenance even a single platform that isn’t under their full sway and control.
Twitter’s tech org may be using BleachBit by the boat load, so to speak.
That is my concern. What are these people doing right now to cover their arses??
They can’t truly get rid of anything, and Musk is no computer illiterate. He almost certainly already has a team assembled to go in there and do what he wants done. He comes off as kind of spacey (no pun intended, but heh, anyway), but he’s very savvy and isn’t playing around here. He truly think this acquisition is important on principle, and he’s not going in unprepared.
Hopefully the code isn’t the only thing now locked down. All logs, data audit trails, internal emails, etc. need to be frozen and protected. The announcement about freezing the code indicates Musk is getting some good advice. And that requirement should be backed up with severe financial and legal consequences for the board, management, and anyone else with access.
That said, I am skeptical Musk will disclose Twitter’s dirty laundry beyond making ‘The Algorithm’ code public. Assuming there actually is a formal one in any formal software engineering sense. Other than code to flag ‘offensive’ comments Twitter’s extended star chamber of radical leftists then reviews.
We’ll see what happens, JHogan. We can only speculate at this point, but I would be very surprised if Musk’s team has not already descended on Twitter HQ and frozen everything that doesn’t affect keeping the site up and running.
Elon is making all the right noises around making algorithms public and allowing anyone to be a blue check! That alone is enough for me. Everything else and the absolute shit tone of liberal tears is just the icing on top.
BleachBit, or trojan horses. It also wouldn’t be hard to erase their git repositories and “oops, the backups were bad”.
So then what? Musk has to start over without the offending data/algorithms/etc. that unfairly blocked conservatives (and some liberals who didn’t toe the party line)? Is that worse than not knowing how they did it in the first place?
Personally, I just want the shadowbanning and tweet suppression to stop. I don’t really care about how it was done (and we all know why it was done).
[African-American] in ‘Definitive Agreement’ to Acquire Twitter for $44 Billion
+10
Making the censorship algorithms open source would be amusing.
I notice over the last few weeks many of the people supposedly on the right side claiming Musk to be a leftist or deep stater.
The noise reminds me of the same set of noise employed against Trump prior to 2016.
Like Trump, it’s clear Elon Musk believes in freedom and liberty. One will seldom go wrong when that is your guiding principle. And Elon has it.
He should demand that someone take a snapshot of the entire code base and escrow it until the deal closes. I’d like to see how their algorithms actually worked and I am sure they don’t want anyone to see it!