After three months of planning, Musk finally got what he wanted and successfully hugged "Twitter".
Twitter from Musk
Twitter announced on Monday that it has accepted Elon Musk's offer to buy the company for $44 billion.
The end result was musk buying the company for $54.20 per share, a 38 percent premium to the share price before Musk announced his holding of Twitter, valuing Twitter as a whole at $44 billion.
After the completion of the transaction, Twitter will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and complete the delisting. The privatization of Twitter is also one of the key targets of Musk's acquisition.
The transaction is expected to close in 2022, although it will still require approval from Twitter shareholders, regulators and other conditions to meet the transaction conditions.
In response, Musk immediately forwarded the relevant statement, "shouting" Yes!!! Express excitement.
He said in the statement that the Twitter platform will be made better by a variety of measures, including developing new features to enhance products, making back-end algorithms open source, increasing external trust, while cracking down on bots that publish spam posts, real-name authentication, etc.
In addition, he added: "I will not delete the most harsh words that scold me, because this is the true meaning of free speech." ”
As for the whereabouts of former US President Trump's relevant accounts, as of now, Musk has not publicly expressed whether he will restore former President Trump's Twitter accounts after the acquisition of Twitter.
Trump, however, said that even if the Twitter account is restored, it will not use the platform.
After the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021, Twitter immediately banned Trump's account.
Musk hunts Twitter
In fact, as early as mid-March, Musk had already begun to attack Twitter.
On March 14, Musk quietly filed an application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to increase his stock holdings.
In this application, we see that Musk will acquire a 9.2% stake in Twitter in a passive investment.
On March 25, Musk began a public opinion war.
A poll was launched on his Twitter account: "Do you think Twitter abides by the principles of free speech?" ”
Seventy percent of netizens think not.
After the vote, Musk asked: "Do we need a new platform?" ”
At the time, everyone thought that Musk might have to make a social platform himself, but what he didn't expect was that he was planning to buy Twitter and transform it himself.
On April 4, news came out that Musk had acquired a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, becoming the largest shareholder.
Subsequently, from April 5 to April 7, a scene was staged between the two, inviting Musk to join the board, but Musk politely refused.
It wasn't until April 15 that Musk began the hunt, announcing his readiness to buy Twitter.
At the beginning, Twitter's side was still a look of "seeing death as home" and "ending up together", and even prepared to use the "poison pill plan" to prevent Musk from acquiring.
But now, judging from the results, Twitter finally came from Musk.
Why cling to Twitter
Some netizens ridiculed Musk: It's good to have money, and you can buy it directly to see who is upset.
In fact, most people believe that Musk's targeting of Twitter has a lot to do with his censorship system.
Musk has repeatedly criticized Twitter's censorship policy, arguing that it seriously affects the principle of free speech.
As Musk said in his acquisition statement, the most important purpose of the acquisition of Twitter is to completely revise and rewrite the platform's rules and regulations for speech management and the consequences of speech. He has repeatedly expressed his desire to protect "free speech" on this platform on various channels recently.
In a statement, he also said the following changes will be made to the Twitter product and the company as a whole:
1) Strengthen the product with new functions: edit buttons, better short video/live broadcast, audio live broadcast function, all within the possible scope of consideration;
2) Open source algorithms to enhance public trust: He only said this a few times, without specifically explaining what algorithms are open source and how to open source methods. However, according to the collation of public information and reasonable speculation, his meaning should be the algorithm of public Twitter timeline information display, that is, to let the public understand why they see what kind of content on the timeline, and even in the future, it is not excluded that it is possible for users to define the working mode of this algorithm themselves, so that the timeline is more in line with their own needs;
3) Defeat spam bots: In general, eliminating the presence of bot accounts/trolls and making the platform cleaner should be the result that all users want.
4) Authenticating all humans: It is not yet certain how to authenticate the law. We can only continue to watch Musk's subsequent actions.
Musk tweeted today:
"I hope that even the critics who hate me the most will continue to stay on Twitter, because that's what free speech really means."
But whether Musk is trying to protect free speech or to make it profitable, I'm afraid only he knows.
Synthesized from cnet, silicon star people