$3 billion to buy Twitter, Musk to engage in their own Web 3.0?

Author | Zheng Yue

Edit | Zheng Xuan

"Big V" Musk is no longer satisfied with being a "big V", he directly invested in Twitter to become the largest shareholder, and joined the company's board of directors to participate in decision-making.

On April 4, according to documents disclosed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought a 9.2% stake in social media giant Twitter, nearly 4 times more than Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's 2.25%, while replacing VANGUARD GROUP INC (Pioneer Fund), which holds 8.8% of Twitter's shares, as Twitter's largest external shareholder. Musk's increase in Twitter shares was completed on March 14.

On the evening of April 5, Twitter filed a document with the SEC showing that Twitter has included Musk on the company's board of directors for a term of 2024.

Musk's 10 years on Twitter have included more than 15,000 tweets, including the wealth code, the traffic code, serious discussions, and jokes. The money that joined Twitter this time is only a small meaning for the world's richest man, but there is still a deep thinking about Technology and the world behind Musk.

Perhaps, after shelling Web 3.0, Musk wants Twitter to continue to be the infrastructure of the next generation of Internet speech environment, building a real future.

Looking forward to the scene in the latest tweet, Musk said: "Twitter's next board meeting will be ignited."

01 Love just buy it and transform it

As a Twitter user and a Twitter "super big V" with 80.35 million fans, Musk has been dissatisfied with many experiences of Twitter, and he believes in freedom and equality is particularly dissatisfied with various speech restrictions.

A week before the announcement of the stake, Musk issued a number of tweets on Twitter's "free speech" issue, and now it seems that he has become the first shareholder, like a "master" posture.

On March 25, Musk launched a vote on Twitter: Do you think Twitter adheres to the principle of "free speech"? Over 70% of the more than 2 million votes chose "no." Musk then said that Twitter's algorithm should be open source, attracting the retweet support of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

On the 27th, he once again forwarded the voting results, saying that although Twitter is a de facto "public opinion square", there are many restrictions on speech, failure to abide by the principle of free speech, and undermining democracy.

He also tweeted the same day, "Do you need a new platform?" At that time, there was a lot of discussion, is Musk talking about it or is he really trying to create a new social platform? It was only a week later that people understood that Musk was "angry" and wanted to "buy" Twitter and transform it into a "new" Tweet.

The public filing did not directly disclose musk's purpose of investing in Twitter, and how this action had a specific impact on Twitter's operations. Even Musk's current stake is 9.1 percent, and in the context of Wall Street, less than 10 percent is defined as "passive holding," meaning the shareholder doesn't seek control of the company and doesn't want to dictate who is in charge of the company.

But Wall Street rules clearly don't apply to Musk — on April 5, he launched a direct poll and did a Twitter user survey, "Do you want to add an edit button [for Twitter]?"

Musk is also voting to misspel "no" as "on," implying that the tweet requires editing. A small Easter egg is that Weibo launched the editing function in 2017, but only elite members can use it.

In this way, "buy it if you like it" is indeed the direct reason for Musk to enter Twitter, after all, Musk is also a veteran of "Twitter Governance Company".

Sources say there are concerns about whether Musk will act in full accordance with the "passive holding" rule. According to reports, Cathie Wood, the wooden sister of the "goddess of female stocks", said Musk has sent a "strong signal" to Twitter's current CEO to push for changes in its management. Current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal only took office on November 29 last year.

Jero Chino, an analyst at a research firm, even said, "Musk's sudden expansion of stock purchases may be to buy Twitter."

From hating iron and steel to personally operating, the next step will not go to the acquisition of Twitter, depending on Musk's next thinking on social platforms.

02 Musk Twitter Inc

Musk is both a traffic maker and a "goldfinger" of stock prices, and there are even comments that "Musk's influence on Reddit, the home base of Retail Investors in the United States, is comparable to Buffett". His tweets are influencing Tesla's stock price, changing the cryptocurrency market, and this time, of course, Twitter's stock price.

Twitter shares closed up 27.12 percent on Monday at $49.97 a share, the biggest gain since an IPO in November 2013, and Tesla shares followed suit by 5.61 percent.

In addition to the impact of the discourse on the stock price, Musk has actually been tweeting "governing the company". Even his tweets have been specially studied, and the foreign data analysis website Visual Capitalist has analyzed Musk's fifteen thousand tweets in the past 10 years.

A Decade of Elon Musk's Tweets, Visualized |visualcapitalist.com

Statistics found that it is not surprising that the most topics are "SpaceX" and "Tesla", and Musk is most concerned about his own company on Twitter. Two of the companies' important moments were announced by Musk on Twitter, and his "getting things done" also brought a lot of topics and traffic to Twitter.

December 2017: Musk begins selling Merchandise from The Boring Company. It was mostly a joke, but he announced on Twitter that if he sold 50,000 "Boring" hats, he would release a Boring Company flamethrower, and eventually this limited edition flamethrower, each for $500 and 20,000 units, sold out.

February 2018: Twitter buzzes as tesla's electric sports car, the Roadster, is launched into space.

April 1, 2018: Musk tweeted that "Tesla is bankrupt", and with his beard pulled, sleeping on the street, broken cardboard for the photo, Tesla stock price fell 7% on the day.

August 2018: Musk said on Twitter that he was "considering taking Tesla private," and Tesla's stock rose more than 13 percent the next day, but the privatization did not take place, causing the stock price to fall. The incident raised allegations against Musk by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who arbitrarily expressed his views to affect the stock price and was suspected of fraud. In the end, Musk paid a fine of $20 million (about 134 million yuan), promising to "establish additional control procedures to monitor Musk's speech on social platforms."

In May 2020, Musk tweeted, "I think Tesla's stock price is too high." On that day, Tesla's market value evaporated by more than $14 billion.

On January 29, 2021, Musk added "#bitcoin" to his Twitter profile page, and a few days later, Musk announced that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and planned to accept it as a payment method. The news caused the price of Bitcoin to rise by 17% to $44,000, a record high at the time. As cryptocurrencies continue to gain support from major financial institutions, Bitcoin has been in the spotlight throughout the year.

In July 2021, Musk tweeted a vote asking if he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla stock to pay taxes. Most Twitter users voted yes, and he "obediently" followed up with the sale of more than $16 billion worth of Tesla stock.

In December 2021, Musk tweeted, "Did anyone see Web 3.0?" I can't find it." And Twitter founders sang one and slammed Web 3.0 at this stage is just marketing terms.

In 2022, Musk tweeted in English, Russian and Ukrainian to "single out Putin": "I challenge Vladimir Putin here, we will gamble on Ukraine in a one-on-one duel, do you dare to fight?" As a result, Putin did not respond, only the spokesman replied sarcastically.

……

Musk likes to interact with netizens very much, loves the voting function, and the decisions handed over to Twitter netizens are always said and done, and free speech and equality are regarded as principles. His interactions on Twitter range from big guys to small whites, topics from serious to jokes, perhaps for Musk, betting with netizens on Twitter, and going head-to-head with Pujin, there is no difference.

03 The obvious and derogatory praise of Web 3.0

Musk, who advocates equal democracy in this way, has shelled Web 3.0.

Along with the metaverse and NFTs, Web 3.0 is also a buzzword for people to discuss the next generation of the Internet in recent times. The core idea is to return production and ownership to the users who participate in the ecology and use the platform, rather than being owned by the Internet platform or the few people who control the Internet platform company. Like NFTs, Web 3.0 is envisioned and practiced by blockchain technology, but it is still in its infancy.

In the concept of Web 3.0, in the future, every user will be the creator involved in operating the Internet environment, rather than the tool that now generates traffic as a platform to earn advertising fees. In the future Web 3.0 social platform, creators can use the content and influence he creates to directly generate revenue, and even have the right to vote on the direction of platform development and content regulation.

Web 3.0 has important features that help the Internet "eliminate authority", and there is even a saying that Web 3.0 will be a comprehensive victory for the public against the giants.

It sounds like Web 3.0 coincides with Musk's supremacy of equality, and even musk is a key figure in driving the development of Bitcoin, musk should support this new technology concept that treats every internet user equally. But at the end of 2021, Musk sneered at the current Web 3.0 on Twitter and fought with Web 3.0 supporters.

First Jack Dorsey tweeted, "Web 3.0 is not yours." He argues that Web 3.0 belongs to venture capital and limited partnerships (LPs) and will never escape the control of these people.

Musk then tweeted that Web 3.0 could not be found, and Dorsey responded that "between a and z." A16z, a venture capital firm that hints at being actively invested in Web 3.0 and making a lot of money.

Musk has previously expressed his direct disdain for Web 3.0, "Web 3.0 sounds like nonsense." On December 20, he replied under a video, "I don't think Web 3.0 will come true — it's more of a marketing term than an actual thing."

This video is from a 1995 American talk show host who teases Bill Gates about his concept of the Internet: "Maybe you don't know exactly what the Internet is." Gates replied, "Yes." Of course, now Gates' vision has long been realized.

This shows that disruptive technologies were easily questioned in the early days, and the video tweet author used this to compare the early days of the Internet with the criticism of Web 3.0 now.

Musk's tweet also said after calling Web 3.0 a marketing term at this stage, "But we really want to know what the world will look like in 10, 20, 30 years." In the comments section of the video, Musk replied with a comment that "the best way to predict the future is to start building", Musk said: "Yes".

It can be seen that Musk may already be building the future Internet in his mind. Although Musk has repeatedly "criticized" Web 3.0, he has not completely denied this concept, but is a critique of the current development of the phenomenon of deviation from the essence of Web 3.0.

Joining Twitter this time, Musk's desire to make efforts to create a more equal and open speech environment is self-evident, and may also be a path to his future world.

Moving from Twitter to Web 3.0 isn't impossible, either.

Former Coinbase CTO Balaji. Srinivasan and Jack Dorsey argue that Twitter also existed to defend free speech, but eventually under the intervention of business and politics, it also went to the end of suppressing the voice.

Jack. Dorsey responded, "You're mistaken, twitter was a company from the beginning, there were incentives for businesses, but it's now trying to make a difference through Twitter's decentralized social platform, BlueSky." Web 3.0 has the same corporate incentives, but it's wrapped up in a 'decentralized' skin, which is actually a completely different ownership structure."

I don't know how Musk assessed the BlueSky business that Twitter had been stagnant for many years when he entered Twitter, and how much participation he could have after entering the home, or maybe BlueSky was a scene in the future he built.

*Header image source: Twitter

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