Elon Musk officially closed his $44 billion Twitter takeover last night and is wasting no time at all in making changes. We guess we wouldn’t either if legally forced to spend $44 billion, but still. 😂
It began with Musk entering Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday carrying a sink and changing his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit.” 📝
Thursday morning, he tweeted to advertisers, explaining why he bought the company and his vision. He then spent some time with Twitter employees at the headquarters. And in the evening, after closing the transaction, he tweeted, “The bird is freed.”
Free from what you might ask? Well, a lot of its top executives, for one thing. 🥁
After taking control, Musk fired Twitter’s CEO Parag Argawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Policy Chief Vijaya Gadde. Though as they depart with cushy executive pay packages, many see this as them freeing themselves of Twitter’s problems, haha. They’ve got a point there… 😆
In the meantime, the NYSE has suspended trading of $TWTR shares and will delist the company on November 8th.
The story is still developing, and there will likely be much more to discuss in the days ahead. Even as we write this article, Musk has tweeted about a content moderation council, a joke about making comedy legal on the platform, and a reference to two trolls who tricked the media into thinking they were recently laid off from the company. Unfortunately for real employees, they’re still in the dark about their fate, though most expect significant cuts to come.
Meanwhile, everyone and their mother continues to weigh in. Many of them using Twitter to do so. One EU official warned Musk that he’d have to ‘fly by our rules.’ And India is preparing a panel that could veto various social media platforms’ content moderation decisions. Oh, and General Motors is suspending its advertising on the platform.
See, we told you there are a lot of angles to this story!
We’ll keep you updated, as always. But that’s all for now! ✌️