Elon Musk is bringing friends in to help turn things around at Twitter.
Key Details
- Elon Musk is officially the owner of Twitter and is beginning to make his mark on the company.
- After completing the purchase of Twitter last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is bringing in friends and colleagues to help make changes to the social media platform.
- Musk has been open about the changes on the platform letting his followers know what is happening.
Why it’s news
After months of fighting Elon Musk officially took ownership of Twitter last week announcing the purchase with a tweet stating… “the bird is freed.”
Musk began to immediately make his mark on the company by sending Tesla engineers to meet with Twitter product leaders to ensure everything was in place for his takeover. Now, Musk is continuing to make changes and bringing close friends and colleagues to help.
Not long after the sale was finalized on Friday the garage at Twitter’s headquarters began filling with Teslas in the reserved spots all parked in a row, according to Axios writers Sara Fischer and Dan Primack.
There have also been reports that Twitter’s former Head of Consumer Product Kayvon Beykpour and the PayPal founding CEO David Sacks have both been seen at Twitter’s headquarters.
Other of Musk’s friends and colleagues have been seen inside Twitter’s headquarters and tweeting from the location in the days following the acquisition.
Backing up a Bit
The full timeline between Elon Musk and Twitter is long.
It all started in April, Elon Musk announced that he held a 9.2% stake in Twitter, which made him the social-media company’s largest shareholder. Twitter’s stock price soared 25% after the announcement.
Later that month, the billionaire entrepreneur offered to buy all of Twitter at $54.20 per share—equaling about $44 billion. He said he originally invested in the platform because he believes it is failing in its potential to be the leading platform for free speech around the globe. In fact, he asked his 2 million followers if Twitter adhered to principles of free speech, and 70% said “no.”
In July, Musk decided to back out of the deal, claiming there were too many fake accounts on the platform. Twitter has since sued Musk in Delaware Court of Chancery to complete the deal and requested the trial to take place in September. Musk, on the other hand, wanted to delay the trial until February 2023, stating that a case of this size takes time to prepare. Twitter was granted its wish of an expedited trial, with Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the presiding judge, setting a five-day trial for October.
Musk then countersued Twitter, stating his reason for the termination was due to Twitter not being upfront about the number of fake accounts on the platform.
Then, Elon Musk and his legal team subpoenaed Twitter’s founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, to get him to release documents that provide accurate information on bots and spam accounts on the social-media platform and now these documents have come out from Zatko and Musk and his lawyers have subpoenaed him as well.
Then, Musk’s text messages were revealed in court filings and it showed that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tried to facilitate Musk’s Twitter takeover, which led to Musk officially reverting back to his original deal to buy the social-media company.