Yesterday's hottest tech news was tesla CEO Elon Musk's acquisition of a large number of twitter shares, becoming Twitter's largest shareholder. More than 73 million shares are worth about $2.9 billion.
Elon Musk has long been one of Twitter's most well-known and loyal users. In fact, the social network is one of his most valued battles, where he often shares his life, his company, his views, and of course, memes. Overall, Twitter is Musk's favorite social media, and "like it, buy it" really fits the maverick style of the world's richest man.
Now, in addition to Being a model user of Twitter, Musk has become the biggest shareholder of the social network. According to filings with the SEC, Musk has acquired a significant stake in Twitter.
He now owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter stock, or 9.2 percent of the company's common stock. The ownership percentage is calculated based on 800,641,166 issued ordinary shares as at February 10, 2022. The acquisition, which took place on March 14, is valued at approximately $2.9 billion. There is no doubt that Monday's news caused Twitter's stock price to rise by about 25%.
Just two weeks ago, Musk launched a vote on whether Twitter strictly adheres to free speech as part of a functioning democracy. He conducted a poll among his more than 80 million followers and reminded them to be cautious when answering the question because the results of the vote will have consequences. 2035924 accounts participated in the vote, with 70.4 percent believing Twitter didn't follow that principle and only 29.6 percent answering the affirmative question.
Based on the results of the vote, Musk sent another tweet in response. He asked his fans exactly what they needed to do to improve Twitter. "Twitter is actually a public city square that, if the principle of free speech is not respected, it will fundamentally undermine democracy." What should I do? He also asked in a follow-up tweet if a new platform was needed.
For Musk's series of tweets, his fans have commented a lot on Twitter, suggesting a lot of ways to improve the social network, and the topic has been hot. It now seems clear why Tesla's CEO suddenly became so interested in the Twitter issue some time ago, because a few days ago, he bought the company's stock. In terms of marketing, Musk has always been a master.
So as Twitter's largest shareholder now, does Musk want to help his friend Jack Dorsey manage Twitter? Obviously unlikely. One of the remaining possibilities, then, may be to take control of Twitter's voice to guarantee "freedom of speech" for relevant interest groups. At the very least, Musk tweets from now on without worrying about being "caught" again.