Written by | Li Yimeng
Edit | Routing Agency
From Zip2 to PayPal, from SpaceX to Tesla, and from SolarCity and Boring Corp to OpenAI and Neuralink, Elon Musk is seen as a real projection of the superhero "Iron Man" in real life because of the breadth and cutting-edge of his field.
At present, the extension of his identity will be expanded again.
In the early morning of Beijing time today (April 26), the US social media platform Twitter announced that it officially accepted Musk's acquisition offer.
Under the agreement, the latter will buy Twitter for $54.2 per share, totaling about $44 billion.
A securities filing said Musk had worked with Morgan Stanley and other lenders. The latter will provide it with $13 billion in debt financing, as well as another $12.5 billion in Tesla stock loans. In addition, he pledged to raise $21 billion in self-financing through equity financing.
Since this is a private-to-private sale by a private company, rather than a merger between two business giants, there are no regulatory hurdles. The transaction is expected to close within this year.
In the future, Twitter will become a privately held company, and then become a faithful embodiment of Musk's personal will.
"I think it's very important to have a free speech, inclusive arena." He said.
Musk is interviewed by Chris Anderson
At the recent TED 2022 conference, when asked by TED Chairman Chris Anderson, who was in charge of the interview, about the motivation for acquiring Twitter, Musk said he hoped the move would help Twitter users "speak freely within the limits permitted by law."
Investors' concerns
With the vision of "making Twitter better than ever," Musk plans to make it happen through a series of means.
Musk, a firm believer in algorithms — or rather, technology — is a member of the American Academy of Engineering , intends to make Twitter's algorithms about content censorship and recommendation public.
Musk believes that whether it is recommendation or stream restriction, Twitter should make any form of change to the tweets posted by the public, and it should be widely publicized about the mechanism behind this behavior.
"I believe that one of the things Twitter should do is open source the algorithm." "Whether this change is based on an algorithm or performed manually, there shouldn't be some kind of behind-the-scenes operation," he said. ”
This means that once Musk takes over Twitter, there will be a series of jobs waiting for him to complete.
According to a statement released on the 25th, these efforts include enhancing the product experience by adding new features, putting algorithms on the open source community Github to increase credibility, managing spam bots, and authenticating all users.
Musk is an extremely busy man. It's unclear how much time he can spare for Twitter in addition to Dealing with Tesla and SpaceX.
SpaceX was recently busy with nasa Crew-4 launch missions
But at least until the deal is completed, the new job will inevitably bring him a certain degree of distraction.
It also raised concerns among Tesla's investors.
"This is good news for Twitter shareholders because it looks like Musk will solve some of the problems that the company won't be working on anytime soon." But the same news would upset Tesla's shareholders, as Musk's attention will apparently be distracted from thinking about how to win the electric car race. Edward Moya, an analyst at OANDA's currency brokerage firm, said.
At present, the competition in Tesla's electric vehicle market is becoming more and more fierce.
In the usual sense, Tesla, as a modern enterprise, undoubtedly has a complete staffing. Without anyone, the company can function healthily.
But what's special is that Musk plays an overly important role in the electric car manufacturing company.
In 2019, the company's co-founder and longtime chief technology officer, JB Straubel, announced his departure after 15 years in office.
In 2019, Tesla's former CTO Straubel left the company
A document filed earlier by Tesla with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that Musk, in addition to serving as ceo of the company, also holds a bizarre position as a "technoking."
Commemorating Musk's job title, a picture made by overseas netizens
But for Tesla's investors, he seems to be taking on too much.
Unlike SpaceX, which has long been run by president and CHIEF Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, Tesla has always lacked a clear "number two."
Several senior executives have left Tesla in recent years, including Jerome Guillen, the president in charge of the heavy-duty truck business, who left last year.
Since then, Tesla has become a company without a COO, cTO and president, and the management is very thin.
The only other two executives currently on the company's investor relations website are Andrew Baglino, a senior vice president of engineering, and Zachary Kirkhorn, the so-called "master of coin, roughly the equivalent of chief financial officer."
"Musk should focus on Tesla instead of wasting time trying to acquire and manage Twitter." David Turner, CEO of investment research firm New Constructs, said in an email that "Tesla faces stiff competition in the electric car space. Major automakers are catching up and making a variety of innovative new products. ”
Turner's remarks represent the views of many on Wall Street.
They argue that Musk's acquisition of Twitter has partly distracted Tesla from the many external challenges it faces — whether deliberate or objective.
In the U.S., Tesla is facing challenges from emerging automakers like Rivian and Lucid. In China on the other side of the ocean, competitors such as Weilai, Ideal, and Xiaopeng are also gradually rising.
Rivian is considered Tesla's strongest competitor
As global competition intensifies, investors want Musk to prioritize Tesla rather than pour attention into social media like Twitter.
"There are only a few hours a day, and if Musk feels the need to focus more on the work of fixing the 'Little Blue Jay' (Twitter's logo), then he won't have time to think about how to build cool new cars." They said.
Maybe it's a good thing
According to Forbes, although Musk is involved in many businesses, of his nearly $219 billion personal net worth, stock gains from Tesla still account for the majority.
Since 2022, Tesla shares have fallen nearly 6 percent, though. But Tesla's stock price has fallen less than traditional rivals such as General Motors, Ford and The Tellantis Group — all three of Detroit's biggest three have fallen more than 20 percent this year.
Tesla expects its earnings per share to rise nearly 145% from a year ago in its recently released first quarter 2022 earnings report.
The increase in stock earnings comes from the support of investors, and investor confidence comes from the growth of Tesla's main business.
In 2021, Tesla achieved a total of 935,700 pure electric vehicle sales worldwide, ranking first in the world. Compared with BYD, which ranks second, its sales volume is 1.6 times that of the latter, accounting for 14.4% of the global new energy passenger car market, and the proportion of the pure electric vehicle market is as high as 20.3%.
In the first quarter of this year, Tesla's global deliveries broke records again, exceeding 310,000 units.
For a company that doesn't have a chief marketing officer and doesn't advertise much, this is obviously a good achievement.
According to a data report released last year by AD AGE, the largest advertiser in the United States, Tesla's bicycle advertising budget was only $0.11 (about 0.72 yuan), which is close to zero.
In 2020, Tesla's advertising investment is 0
This is also officially used by Tesla for self-marketing.
"Don't leave a figure on the billboard, speak with facts such as products and word of mouth, insist on disruptive innovation, and the advertising cost is almost zero, this is Tesla." In a promotional material filled with elements of breakpoint stroke illustrations, Tesla wrote.
Tesla insists on not advertising, to speak with products and word of mouth
Musk's active performance on social media is considered to be one of the important "advertisements" that promote Tesla's new car sales.
Since signing up for a Twitter account in June 2009, he has never wasted time talking about Tesla with netizens.
Even his "accusations" of Bill Gates shorting Tesla were finally confirmed through his Twitter account.
However, the hype about Tesla on Twitter has also caused trouble for Musk many times.
In 2018, he tweeted about plans to take Tesla private at $420 a share, saying "the money is in place" before announcing his abandonment of the plan.
The huge volatility caused by the news to the stock price led the SEC to file civil charges and $20 million in fines against Musk and Tesla.
Two years later, he tweeted that "Tesla's stock price is too high in my opinion," plunging the company's stock price by 10 percent and wiping $14 billion off its market value.
The SEC has once again stepped in to ban Musk from tweeting about Tesla matters.
In addition, Musk's account has been restricted by Twitter for criticizing politicians, spreading misleading information about the COVID-19 pandemic, and making offensive statements about the transgender community.
Such unpleasant experiences, believed to have been combined with other factors, constitute Musk's motivation for his decision to buy Twitter.
But to a larger extent, there is a widespread belief that Musk's move merely continues the tradition of U.S. billionaires acquiring influential media platforms and feeding back their main business.
Historically, there have been many cases of Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of The New York Post in 1976 and the Wall Street Journal in 2007, respectively, and Jeff Bezos' acquisition of The Washington Post in 2013.
On Twitter, Musk, with 84.631 million followers, has more than once demonstrated the power of his personal remarks in boosting Tesla's new car sales and brand voice.
In the future, Twitter may be regarded by Tesla as an important and free marketing and public relations tool.
"In this sense, being an influencer first and then selling goods is a feasible path." For super influencers, they can directly sell the future and dreams, so how can they not buy a media? After all, they need to have direct conversations with their future potential followers. Online writers and vegetable heads wrote in comments about Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
According to MCN agency Webfluential's calculations based on the number of followers, average daily visits, engagement rates and other indicators, the commercial value of each individual Tweet of Musk ranges from $57,460 to $70,230.
Musk tweeted enough for the average person to eat decently for a year
According to statistics, Musk released a total of 7 tweets about Tesla through his Twitter account in March this year.
If in the future, Tesla's "zero-cost employment" Musk advertises for the brand on Twitter, then the company can save at least $542,000 a month under the frequency of sending 7 messages a month. For the full year, this figure could reach $6.504 million.
Of course, controlling a social platform with media attributes may have other collateral benefits for Tesla's CEO.
In recent years, some of the company's performance in the public eye — for example, the way it handles self-driving accidents and consumer rights defense — has sparked controversy on social media.
Although Musk himself hopes to encourage people to freely express their views on social media by publishing a Twitter restriction mechanism, he has not promised that he will not add other criteria that are consistent with his will to such mechanisms.
In order to highlight the defense of the public's right to speak freely, Musk did not forget to emphasize in the statement of the acquisition of Twitter, "Even my harshest critics can stay on Twitter."
Note, however, that Musk uses the phrase "my worst critics."
That is to say, what Twitter can tolerate to the greatest extent in the future is a personal criticism of Musk, but perhaps it does not include tesla where he works.
Perhaps, in the future Twitter flow limit standard, the criticism of "Tesla" will become more sensitive.
Write at the end:
"Expanding personal influence, spreading beliefs ... Finally completing the myth that seemed impossible at the beginning, I think Musk may like to go this way. ”
Just as He Caitou's inference, through the wild dreams announced by social media, the real-life version of "Iron Man" Musk has indeed played a role in "enlightening the public" in some fields.
"Traditional car manufacturers are not unable to build, but they do not believe at all. People buy electric cars now, not cars, they buy the future they believe in in their hearts. The more people believe, the faster the popularity of electric vehicles. "In the view of Hecaitou, electric vehicles are one of the most conspicuous in these fields.
From this perspective, the executives of automobile manufacturing companies establish personal influence on social media, and then promote the production and marketing business and brand image of their companies, which is nothing more than a "path" that can be explored in the current market competition environment and social media environment.
On Chinese social media, there seem to be several such bright names.
For example, Akio Toyoda.
Chief test driver Akio Toyoda put on a helmet, but did not open a Weibo member
The Japanese car executive, who has 214,000 Weibo followers, added the message of "Lexus Master Driver Chief Test Driver" to his personal certification in addition to the "Toyota Motor President". In addition, he did not forget to put a racing helmet on his head.
This label is undoubtedly the image of Akio Toyoda in the Chinese audience, rendering more professional, deluded and loving cars. It is enough to make Chinese car enthusiasts feel a little good about the Japanese automaker.
Another example is Herbert Dies.
As chairman of the Volkswagen Group Management Committee, he has frequently interacted with netizens in Chinese Internet communities such as Weibo and LinkedIn in recent years, narrowing the distance between the multinational company and Chinese consumers.
From the initial sales of the Volkswagen ID. series, which were questioned, to the current ranking of China's best-selling electric vehicles, direct communication between Diess and Chinese users has been indispensable.
Dees not only bought Weibo members, but also often promoted the ID. family
Among the managers of China's local automobile companies, Yu Jingmin should be regarded as an outstanding case.
In the past few years, as a "fat head Yu" in and out of social platforms such as Douyin and video numbers, Yu Jingmin's attempts in "live streaming with goods" have played an effective role in exploring and testing the business model changes initiated by automobile manufacturers for the Internet generation.
Fat Tou Yu and Dees do not know whether they have exchanged experience in carrying goods
Nowadays, when the veteran Internet celebrity Musk opens up more expression space and discourse power on his own Twitter, and when more Chinese and foreign car executives come to the front of the stage from behind the scenes and bring goods for their own companies and brands, we have reason to believe that more car executives will join their ranks in the future.
Two obvious advantages are that the active opening up of the media ecology and the full exploitation of the Internet dividend can help enterprises expand their influence among young people born in the Internet generation on the one hand; on the other hand, it is also expected to make this traditional and aging industry more lively and interesting.
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