Elon Owns Twitter

Never missed Tom from MySpace so much in my entire life… pic.twitter.com/1Bl2v985mt

— Stephen Karpeles (@stephenkarpeles) October 28, 2022

Full disclosure, I was never on MySpace

So, contractary to my predictions, it appears that Elon Musk has actually purchased Twitter.

He has started firing senior executives, including much in the way of the protection team. 

My condolences to anyone who works on Twitter, and if you don't and you rely on Twitter for your livelihood, find another platform:

After months of waffling, lawsuits, verbal mudslinging and the near miss of a full blown trial, Elon Musk now owns Twitter.

On Thursday night, Mr. Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy the social media service, said three people with knowledge of the situation. He also began cleaning house, with at least four top Twitter executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — getting fired on Thursday. Mr. Musk had arrived at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday and met with engineers and ad executives.

The closing of the deal, which followed months of drama and legal challenges as Mr. Musk changed his mind about buying the company, sets Twitter on an uncertain course. Mr. Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has said that he wants to make the social media platform a more freewheeling place for all types of commentary and that he would “reverse the permanent ban” of former President Donald J. Trump from the service.

I'm not sure how much letting Trump back on the platform will say about Twitter, but it will say a awful lot about the Apartheid Era Emerald Mine Heir.

………

The Twitter executives who were fired on Thursday include Parag Agrawal, the chief executive; Ned Segal, the chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, the top legal and policy executive; and Sean Edgett, the general counsel, said two people with knowledge of the matter. At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office, they said.

Also, this is kind of pathological:

………

Mr. Musk has set some ambitious goals for Twitter, which he has said he will transform into an “everything app” called X. In presentations to investors about the deal this spring, he said he anticipated that Twitter would reach annual revenue of $26.4 billion and have 931 million users by 2028. The company reported $5.08 billion in revenue last year and had more than 200 million users.

Elon Musk is still suffering butt-hurt when PayPal was chosen as the branding over X.com over 20 years ago. 

My prediction for Twitter?  

If he lets Trump back on the platform, it will be a bloodbath, with institutional knowledge fleeing, and probably monkey-wrenching the platform on the way out.

It will remain a nihilistic hellscape in the best case scenario.