Mr. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, famously said: If the bank does not change, we will change the bank. It seems that the so-called heroes see the same thing. Today, Elon Musk, the silicon valley hero, Tesla CEO, and SpaceX founder, has also done the same, sending out a deafening voice: If Twitter does not change, we will change Twitter!
What happened?
As we all know, Musk has always been known for his whimsical style of acting, he is straightforward and fast-talking, and he does not hide his emotions and attitudes. Musk is also a heavy user of social media, with more than 80 million followers on Twitter. Over the years, Musk flirted with tens of millions of his die-hard fans via Twitter, pointed out sensitive events, and posted information related to Tesla and SpaceX through social media, so much so that at one point it caused serious consequences, and was stripped of tesla's chairman by the SEC and fined $25 million.
In the past two years, as the world's most influential social media, Twitter has been deeply involved in many sensitive and significant events, judging users' tweets by its own standards, and if it is not, it will be marked with specific words, and even Twitter big V like Trump will eventually be permanently banned, as if disappearing from the world overnight. This approach by Twitter has clearly upset Musk, who has repeatedly tweeted his dissatisfaction with the seemingly unfettered "right to life and death" on social media, arguing that users should have the broadest and most permissive rights on social media to express their views.
Earlier last month, Musk mobilized his 80 million Twitter followers to vote on whether Twitter should follow the loosest freedom of speech, saying: "The results of these votes are important, please vote carefully." The result of the vote seemed to be somewhat unexpected by Musk, because 70% of the 2 million users who voted believe that social media should control what users say. Musk then joked that such a scenario might require an open-source, completely unconstrained social platform, and said he was ready to do it.
However, the news that came out today responded in a surprising way to all of Musk's previous claims.
According to Bloomberg, musk has acquired 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, or 9.2 percent of the total, worth $2.89 billion, according to a document released today by regulators, making him Twitter's largest shareholder, even surpassing its founder Jack Dorsey, who also has only 2.25 percent of the shares.
Of course, the Twitter shares that Musk bought are passive shares and may not affect the operation of Twitter, but as the world's richest man, as a person who has devoted his life to such a grand cause as Mars colonization, is Musk spending so much money to buy Twitter shares, just looking at its long-term interests?
Apparently not.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey
One reasonable explanation for the reason why Musk has spent so much money to acquire so many Twitter shares is that by acquiring Twitter shares, the need for Musk to communicate and communicate with Twitter management has been increased, and subsequent substantive share acquisitions are not ruled out. In addition, even if you only hold these passive shares, for the operation of Twitter, it is a very powerful king explosion, and if you annoy this god man, people throw this card out, for a company with a market value of only about $35 billion, it is tantamount to a thunderbolt on a sunny day.
Ma Yun said: If the bank does not change, we will change the bank. Musk has made this sentence clear: If Twitter doesn't change, we change Twitter!
Let's wait and see.