Elon Musk Buys Twitter
Written by Matthew Gill
Written by Matthew Gill
May 20, 2022
After a week-long battle of trying to claim the ownership of the company, Elon Musk bought Twitter on April 14th, 2022. Musk agreed on buying the company for a set $43 billion. Now, everyone is curious what changes Musk will bring to the company. He has hinted at a few changes, including an edit button and a crypto currency purchase option for subscriptions. It seems Elon Musk is looking forward to the future of his new company. Musk stated, “I look forward to tapping into the company's tremendous potential.” Musk also plans to make the company a private company. He, and many others, believe that the first step to making Twitter a better company is to make it private, to live up to the “social imperative” to express free speech.
On April 4th, 2022, Elon Musk announced that he bought a huge stake of the company, purchasing 9.1% of the Twitter stock, for 2.64 billion USD, making him their largest shareholder on March 14th, 2022. On April 25th, Twitter announced that an agreement has been made for Musk to take control of the company. By buying 9.1% of the stock, Musk forced Twitter to pay attention to him. If he was to sell his portion, it could make Twitter lose money. Many speculate this move was a part of a plan to take control of the company.
Elon Musk has plans for what Twitter is going to look like. He believes that free speech is necessary for a functioning society. Musk wants to make Twitter follow similar rules that the First Amendment, freedom of speech, states. Twitter is a huge source of news for the entire globe and Musk believes the best way to inform the public is without censorship. Surprisingly, he has even talked about allowing former President Donald Trump to return to the platform.
As many know, this isn’t Musk’s only success. Elon Musk is known as the richest man on earth, gaining most of his popularity from his electric car company, Tesla. Musk has also created the company SpaceX, and has since sent many rockets to space and has changed the aerodynamics of spacecrafts. Currently, he is even trying to create a reusable rocket ship. Musk is also open about envisions he has for the future in space, including a plan for building a moon base. In 2000, Elon Musk became the cofounder of PayPal, and in 2002, it just turned public and was bought by eBay for a smooth 1.5 billion. He made 175.8 Million dollars off of that.
According to the New York Times, new updates state that Elon’s deal with twitter is “temporarily on hold”. This does not mean he isn’t going to go through with the offer he also says he is still “committed” to going through with the offer. People speculate if Elon could even back out of the deal if he wanted to. Musk has already signed a contract beyond the one billion dollar breakup fee. Apparently, Twitter could take Elon to court if he refused to pay.
Elon Musk is an extremely popular businessman all over the world. His move to buy Twitter only makes him more popular. Twitter is a huge platform for people all over the globe and depending on what Elon changes, could impact millions of people.