MAY 13, 2022:
LONDON (AP) — Elon Musk says his planned $44 billion purchase of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” pending details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform. The Tesla billionaire’s tweet Friday is another twist amid signs of internal turmoil over the proposed acquisition. Musk linked to a Reuters story from May 2 citing a financial filing from Twitter that estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5% of the company’s “monetizable daily active users” in the first quarter. He says the deal is on hold pending details supporting that calculation, indicating he’s skeptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low. It wasn’t clear whether it could scuttle the deal. Stock in Twitter tumbled 18%.
APRIL 11, 2022:
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Less than a week after announcing that Tesla CEO Elon Musk would join its board of directors, Twitter is reversing course. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the news, which followed a weekend of Musk tweets suggesting changes to Twitter, including making the site ad-free. Nearly 90% of Twitter’s 2021 revenue came from ads. Musk, it was revealed last week, had quickly amassed a massive stake in Twitter to become its largest shareholder. Agrawal didn’t offer an explanation for the reversal, but said that the decision was made by the mercurial billionaire.
Comments