Mysterious ‘X’ app, layoffs and economic woes: What’s next between Elon Musk and Twitter
The first season of the series, which chronicles Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, ended with one of its signature plot twists. In the last chapter, the heroes were preparing for the court and decided whether the businessman should buy the company or not. The stage was set for a second season to tell the story of his legal battle in a Delaware court, but a new change of heart from the mogul changed the script again.
Elon Musk has now agreed to buy the company for the price he originally agreed to, $44 billion. But those six months have changed a lot in its relationship with the social network, as shown by some of the evidence that Twitter brought to trial. This is how the second season of the series begins:
Musk’s offer to renew the contract signed in April ends a major plot twist in the legal process. But experts on this type of acquisition caution that this is only a broad brush, and there could be many details about the acquisition that will ultimately be decided in court. This is evidenced by a statement released by Twitter this Wednesday, in which there is no mention of a new agreement: “We received Musk’s letter. The company’s intention is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.”
“The lawsuit will not stop, but it will continue,” he explained on the edge Columbia University Law Professor Eric Talley. “Techniques are still focused on the October 17 trial,” he says. A judge could delay the process to give the parties more time to negotiate, but until a full settlement is reached, the trial will not be dismissed.
The lawsuit is an attempt to overturn the Twitter acquisition in court, which could cost Musk $200 million, according to estimates. Business Insider. Their respective firms pay $2,500 an hour and have been on trial since June. A total of 100 million per minute of each part.
Musk is an avid Twitter user, but when he’s engaged in one of his conspiracies, he usually stays silent. At most, he makes a few cryptic comments. So it was repeated this time: “Twitter’s acquisition is an accelerator to create X, the app for everything,” wrote on Twitter.
What exactly is “X”? Except for the lyric, which Musk likes a lot, it’s a mystery. He named one of his children after him (“X Æ A-12 Musk”, he named his seventh child, born in 2020), his spacecraft company (SpaceX) or his first company, which merged with another to create Paypal and become you . Millionaire (X.com).
However, this is not the first time that Musk has mentioned his intention to create a multitasking app. In the past, it has said it wants to turn Twitter into WeChat, a Chinese app that started as a messaging service but now combines that functionality with an e-marketplace, social network, job portal, and dating app. , video calls or payment platform. Everything is controlled by the Chinese government.
Among the evidence at trial is a series of messages Musk sent to his brother Kimball detailing how the WeChat model could be replicated in the West. “I have an idea for a blockchain social media system that works for both making payments and sending short text messages/links like Twitter,” he told her in an April 9 conversation.
“You have to pay a very small fee to sign up to the message chain, which eliminates the vast majority of spam and bots. Freedom of expression is guaranteed. The other piece of the puzzle is a huge real-time database that stores a copy of every message on the blockchain in memory, as well as yours, your followers’ and theirs. A copy of all messages sent or received. The third part is a Twitter-like app on your phone that accesses a database in the cloud, he added.
Musk’s private messages provide much more detail about his plans for the company. “You’re free to write ‘Is Twitter dying?'” or whatever. But I think it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me improve Twitter,” the social network’s CEO Parag Agrawal told Billionaire afterward. He tweeted that the profiles with the most followers on the platform hardly commented or uploaded any content, which was a symptom that Twitter was dying.
“What would you do this week?” Musk immediately responded. “It’s a waste of time,” he added later. Agrawal tried to call the phone, but the businessman did not answer. He then called the director of Twitter’s shareholder meeting, who contacted Musk, to ask what had happened.
“I’m going to bid on all of Twitter. Fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won’t work. Drastic measures are needed. It’s hard to do as a listed company because purging fake users makes the numbers horrendous. Why restructure as private company. That’s Jack’s point, too,” Musk replied.
“You need to restructure and return the company to the stock market,” concluded the billionaire.
The messages show Musk’s roadmap for Twitter and why he decided to take control of the company. They also consider the possible replacement of Parag Avragal and the rest of the management, since Musk’s “restructuring” may even lead to layoffs.
The big change since Musk sent these messages is that the economic landscape has completely changed. The billionaire is concerned about the state of his parent company, Tesla, whose price has been in free fall for months. He announced staff cuts and measures as extravagant as his intention to sell a humanoid robot. This is a problem because their goal is to finance the acquisition of Twitter with shares of that company.
This change in the economic backdrop is why many experts suspect that Musk held off on the purchase in the first place. A worldwide recession is not the best situation to test the reforms he has planned for the social network.
But if it wasn’t good for Musk to complete the Twitter acquisition, even less so for the banks that were going to partner with him. It came at the worst time for them. “Like any large asset, banks are looking to sell debt to get rid of it. But investors have lost appetite for riskier debt, spooked by rapidly rising interest rates around the world, fears of a recession and volatile markets. Driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” financial experts explain. Reuters: “They will have to take a loss with this operation.”
Twitter has only turned a profit in two of the last ten years, so Musk’s intention to make economic impact while restructuring the company may fall on deaf ears until the global situation improves.
Source: El Diario
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