Tag Archives: elon musk twitter

Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tesla

Elon Musk’s Net Worth Journey: Now Down $200 Billion Since Peak

In January of 2021 Elon Musk became the second person to be publicly recognized as having a fortune of over $200 billion. The first person to get credit for this “feat”? Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The all time high for Musk’s worth, as calculated by Bloomberg, was $340 billion, which was tallied at that absurd figure in November of 2021.

This amount coincided with the all time high for the stock of Tesla – which has since dropped its market cap by $880 billion while falling around 73% from the peak.

Again the $200 billion figure crosses Elon Musk’s path, this time on the downside, as he became the first person in history to lose $200 billion. Doing the simple math (which could be single dollars but in this case in in billions) in a bit over a year his fortunes changed to the tune of $340 billion > minus $200 billion leaving him with a “paltry” $137 billion to squeak by on.

Of course, this still leaves him with enough scratch to be the #2 richest person in the world after Bernard Arnault, the LVMH French luxury goods titan.

A little refresher on Elon Musk’s journey

As founder and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, Elon Musk has made significant contributions to the development of electric vehicles, space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Musk has also been involved in other ventures such as PayPal and SolarCity.

In the early 2000s, Musk was primarily known for his role as CEO of PayPal, an online payment company that he co-founded in 1998. PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, and Musk’s net worth at the time was estimated to be around $100 million.

After the sale of PayPal, Musk turned his attention to SpaceX, a company he founded in 2002 with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. In 2008, SpaceX became the first privately funded company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station, and in 2012, it became the first private company to send and dock a spacecraft with the ISS. These milestones significantly increased the value of SpaceX and contributed to Musk’s growing net worth.

In the mid-2000s, Musk also became involved in the development of electric vehicles through his involvement with Tesla, a company he co-founded in 2003. Tesla’s first production vehicle, the Roadster, was released in 2008 and received widespread acclaim for its performance and range. In the years that followed, Tesla released several more electric vehicles, including the Model S, Model X, and Model 3, which have all been successful in the market.

Musk’s net worth experienced significant growth in the 2010s, particularly in the last few years. In 2020, Tesla’s stock price soared, and as a result, Musk’s net worth increased by over $100 billion. In 2021, his net worth reached over $200 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world.

In addition to his work with SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has also been involved in other ventures, including Neuralink, a company that develops implantable brain-machine interfaces, and The Boring Company, which focuses on tunnel construction and transportation. These ventures have also contributed to Musk’s net worth.

If his recent purchase of Twitter and the attendant brouhaha played any role in the Tesla crash and his turn of fortunes is unclear. He denies that anything other than inflation is at fault.

Elon Musk’s net worth has fluctuated significantly over the years, but it has experienced significant growth in recent years, particularly in 2020 and 2021. His success is largely due to his involvement in companies such as SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, which have all had a significant impact on various industries.

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Breaking News, Elon Musk, Entertainment, Observation, Twitter

Greta Thunberg is Cool (Again) now According to Elon Musk

Elon takes sides (sort of) in epic tweet battle

Over the years there has been some measure of mutual admiration between Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg. More recently, however, Musk’s shift to the right has put them at odds, clearly.

Also, Greta has not hesitated to criticize the “Techno King” when she thought he was off-base regarding the climate and his actions and statements regarding his support for an accelerated transition to sustainable energy.

After Greta Thunberg’s tweet (and a monumental follow up) became one of the most popular tweets in history (278M views and 3.8M likes, as of this writing), it seems that fame was just too strong of an aphrodisiac for Elon Musk to resist.

Hence the return to her bandwagon:

Though both are climate positive, there have been disagreements

Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg have had a number of interactions in the media over the past few years. These interactions have ranged from supportive tweets and praise to public disagreements and criticism.

The tweet heard round the globe:

One of the first interactions between Musk and Thunberg occurred in 2019, when Musk tweeted his support for Thunberg’s efforts to raise awareness about climate change. In the tweet, Musk wrote: “Greta, you are a hero. Keep going. You are doing a great job.” Thunberg later responded to the tweet, thanking Musk for his support.

In 2020, Musk and Thunberg had a more public interaction when Thunberg criticized Musk’s plans to build a tunnel to alleviate traffic congestion in Los Angeles. Thunberg tweeted that the tunnel was “not the solution” to the problem of climate change and that “we must focus on the real solutions and not let ourselves be sidetracked by shiny distractions.”

Musk responded to the tweet, saying that the tunnel would “help with traffic & create jobs” and that “sustainability must be at the forefront of all decisions.”

Later that year, Thunberg criticized Musk again when he announced that Tesla would be selling carbon credits to other companies as a way to offset their carbon emissions. Thunberg tweeted that the sale of carbon credits was “not a solution” and that it was “a way for companies to avoid cutting their own emissions.”

Musk responded to the tweet, saying that the sale of carbon credits was “better than nothing” and that it was “a first step towards a greener future.”

In 2021, Musk and Thunberg had another public disagreement when Musk tweeted that “the last thing the world needs is a new type of gasoline” in response to Thunberg’s call for a ban on fossil fuels.

Thunberg responded to the tweet, saying that “the last thing the world needs is a Tesla owner who ignores the fact that burning fossil fuels is the main driver of the climate crisis and continues to spread misinformation about renewable energy.”

Despite these disagreements, Musk and Thunberg have also found common ground on some issues. For example, both have expressed support for renewable energy as a way to combat climate change. In 2019, Musk tweeted that “solar and storage are a critical part of the solution” to the climate crisis, and Thunberg has frequently called for a transition to renewable energy as a way to reduce carbon emissions.

Overall, the interactions between Musk and Thunberg in the media have been complex and varied. While they have had public disagreements on some issues, they have also found common ground on others and have expressed support for each other’s efforts to raise awareness about climate change.

Elon Musk, Tesla

Love or Hate Elon Musk, The Tesla Semi is a Big Step Forward

The December 1st launch date is good news for the climate

Elon Musk confirmed, via tweet, that a Tesla Semi successfully completed a 500 mile trip, fully loaded, on November 27th. With a full weight of 81,000 lbs, the 500 mile trip on a full charge is an impressive feat that bodes well for the production roll out, scheduled to begin on December 1st, 2022.

The date also coincides with scheduled delivery of the first production Semis to Pepsi. The timing is also interesting as Coca-Cola has recently begun its roll out of Renault trucks intended for last-mile deliveries in Belgium.

The Tesla Semi accomplishment is particularly impressive as the difficulty of designing a long-haul EV truck that is capable of 500 miles on a charge with a full load of cargo plus battery weight is off-the-charts difficult.

The 500 mile target is important since it corresponds to an 8 hour shift for drivers, after which a rest period would be mandatory. Not only is there an obvious climate benefit to fleets, and eventually the entire long haul industry, switching to EVs, the reduced costs per mile compared to diesel is significant.

Since an 80% charge is the recommended maximum for battery health and longevity, the Tesla Semi is expected to be able to run 400 miles (fully loaded) on a charge. The company has plans to provide solar-powered “Tesla Megacharger” charging stations that can reach 80% in 30 minutes.

Reducing the long haul diesel carbon footprint is a hugely important milestone

Diesel emissions are dirty if you try to breathe them, but they also emit 13% more CO2 compared to vehicles running on gasoline. As of 2020, transportation was responsible for 27% of GHG emissions, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Although replacing the entire US fleet of both passenger vehicles and trucks with EVs, charged ideally by sustainable energy sources is a huge, long term undertaking, the mere possibility that it can be accomplished is proven by this first step into sustainable commercial transportation.

Considering the economic benefits, the opposite of a so-called “green premium” the adoption of EVs for the long haul trucking industry seems very likely to proceed rapidly. And, regardless of your take on Twitter’s recent drama, that’s good news for all of us.

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Apps, Social Media, Tech, Twitter

Goodbye Twitter, Hello Mastodon!

Over 1 million new users in less than 2 weeks

Ok. So it will be what you make of it. There’s not going to be a seamless leap from a heavy web2 monstrosity like what Twitter has become to a clean alternative overnight.

It makes sense, though. A platform that’s built to monetize your life, and does so on a massive scale, can’t be replaced easily by an entirely different beast.

Mastodon is not based on blockchain, for a social platform that is blockchain based, check out Lens Protocol, but does have an open source, ad-free structure that is controlled by users. It is also a microblogging network based on a UX that somewhat resembles Twitter.

As a “Federated” network system, Mastodon has various servers, each of which run by users, and differentiated, for the most part, by affinity.

Basically, rather than having a centralized corporate entity controlling and monetizing your account and data, you trust a peer who has set up a server. You can choose and join a group (server) based on the theme, rules and configuration of that server / moderator. In some cases you will need to be invited or prove worthiness, but such stipulations are set by the moderator and group.

Are we, ex-Twits, sophisticated enough to take on digital self-determination?

The challenge lies in the trade off that is built into the systems, one vs. the other. On a highly commercialized, slick, UX optimized platform like twitter there are lots of addictive, albeit shallow, reasons to participate. And the downsides can be seen everywhere – massive bot harassment, constant DMs from unwanted scammers, hate and ugliness, you get the picture.

A user controlled, open source platform, on the other hand, requires more real engagement from everyone for it to work. This is a double-edged sword – all that extra effort can seem overwhelming, but the benefits, particularly longer term can be magical.

Imagine a place where you are free to communicate with others that share your interests, and those that may not, but without an algorithm to force you to see whatever it wants you to see, or to shadow-block you from being seen, only because you didn’t pay or play its preferred game.

Losing the algorithm that serves the centralized commercial platform’s agenda is, ultimately, the only way forward, but not an easy place to get to.

In the end it is a question of realizing the potential of the internet (web2, 3 or 4) for deeper and more effective communication, not just to create a hellscape of fluff and vitriol that benefits a Zuckerberg and now, potentially, Elon Musk.

By now the shortcomings of Facebook (Meta), Twitter and the various Google services are glaringly obvious and, for the most part, agreed on nearly as much as global warming. However, just like the solutions to that other soon-to-be hellscape, the possibility of millions or even billions of people (in the case of Facebook) spontaneously migrating to a new platform or platforms is slim.

Ultimately, it will take a change in the people that comprise the network itself, not a top down makeover or feature-set rollout.

That is the most interesting point that can be gleaned from the current Mastodon moment; those that have pre-migrated before the current Twitter melt-down era seem to be acutely aware of the challenges, but also of the potential benefits, of growing into the new experiences that are only available there.

This underscores the potential irony of the current Twitter meltdown, intentional or not. Is Elon Musk doing the world a favor by pushing many of the best and brightest communicators out of the nest at the precise moment that it might be possible for another platform to gain a foothold?

Or will this be more akin to the moment that Clubhouse had which was seemingly diluted and washed away by copycat offerings (like the audio services Twitter added) and demoted to near irrelevance?

As has been the case in the past, even with the initial adoption of Facebook and Twitter by the masses, it is user sophistication and need that drives huge new platforms and activities.

Whenever a new platform for online communication is able to meet the moment and the new needs of a critical mass of users, that will be the place and time for the past to fade and something, hopefully better, to emerge.

And, perhaps, learning how to better interact with one-another online, even at the cost of taking more responsibility for learning and co-managing the platform itself, will begin with Mastodon and the Twitter devolution phase.

The following excerpt from TheMarkup.Org, from an interview by Julia Angwin of Adam Davidson gives a bit of a view into what some might find worthwhile at Mastodon:

Angwin: What would you say your biggest takeaway from this experience has been so far?

Davidson: I would say the screaming headline for me is, “Wow, this was awesome. This was amazing.” The Mastodon community was amazing. The journalism community was amazing. It’s really one of the best professional experiences of my life. I just love it.

What I’m finding most satisfying about Mastodon, and I’m seeing a lot of other journalists feel this, is that it actually forces you to ask and confront some of these questions and to make active choices. Even if Mastodon were to remain Twitter’s very tiny stepbrother, I would still like to be part of a Mastodon journalist community because I think we got lazy as a field, and we let Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and, god help us, Elon Musk and their staff decide all these major journalistic questions. I don’t know for how many people that’s a good siren call to join Mastodon, but for me that’s been pretty exciting.

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Crypto, Elon Musk, Twitter

Bitcoin’s Origins get Well-timed Mention in Elon Musk Tweet

The ‘why’ of Bitcoin is back in the news

Bitcoin’s history and origination is an important factor for more than just true believers and maximalists. Created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and with evidence that it was intended, by its founder, known only as Satoshi Nakamoto, as remedy for the failed system that had nearly collapsed the world economic system at that time.

In a recent CoinDesk post, Nathan Thompson wrote: Bitcoin’s genesis block is historic, not just because it contained the first 50 bitcoins, but because it had a message coded in the hash code: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

The bank bailouts and various financial system failures were integral, then, in the creation and purpose of bitcoin, and one could even say, coins and systems that followed, starting with Ethereum in 2015.

After a few weeks of tweets revolving around the Twitter buyout brouhaha, Elon Musk, in a reply, added, in a more introspective tone than has been seen of late, some of his thoughts on the subject;

Interesting timing and a nice shift from the obsession with prices

The recent “crash” and panicked voices over the drop of the bitcoin price below $30k is the unspoken background addressed in this exchange, it appears.

Decrying the erroneous belief that “prices only go up” held by the public at large during the doomed run up to the 2008-2009 crisis could be seen as a hint that, perhaps, prices of assets like Bitcoin, and Tesla shares, for that matter, can not “only go up” and anyone who seeks such a preposterous nirvana is digging their own graves, having failed to learn from all the times in history that fools took the path of peak greed and self-delusion.

Worse, and worth being singled out specifically, are those that profited from the delusion of others in “predatory lending” practices, which Elon Musk “doesn’t support”.

Ultimately for this tweet thread, it was Elon Musk’s Twitter buddy @BillyM2k that nailed it with a series of tweets explicitly spelling out the divergence between the founders and believers in the original, positive, intent of bitcoin and the massive bubble of speculators and scammers that has, in his view unfortunately, grown up around it.

The Best Books on Cryptocurrency

Pointing out that DogeCoin, as an example, was created to highlight the stupidity of speculation and excess greed that came with the avalanche of meme-coins and “shitcoins” etc, that flooded the market and, to a great degree, obscured the original, positive force that bitcoin and decentralized finance was invented to be.

https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1525274042592202752?s=20&t=yenGWhR_EZDBYDoUwOhnZg

Maybe, some of the various challenges and stumbles that Elon Musk is experiencing lately, seemingly for the first time, after a string of incredible triumphs, culminating with the Person of the Year designation and the buyout launch that is now in limbo, will inspire him to be more reflective and use his powerful position as a “Twitter-sage” to draw more attention to the need for a voice of “reason”, rather than as a cheerleader for the bonfires of vanity and speculation.

https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1525277905319628801?s=20&t=yenGWhR_EZDBYDoUwOhnZg

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Elon Musk, Twitter

Elon Musk’s Latest Tweet Says it All, or Does it?

Perhaps in a moment of incoherence, this three-tweet set was launched. It is just plain goofy (unless he is buttering up “the right” for after mid-terms…?)

In what looks like some kind of twisted attempt at being diplomatic, Elon Musk’s latest tweet manages to clarify his stance regarding “free-speech“ about as much as a mud bath clarifies a cupcake.

Leading off with a bizarre attack on what he Calls “the far left “, he explains that it is his contention that they “hate everyone including themselves”.

Standing alone this is already a bizarre statement, which seems like a far right talking point, typical of the Joe Rogan school of anti-cancel culture and anti-so-called “woke-mob”.

He follows this up with a disclaimer of sorts, as bland as it can be stating that he is “no fan” of the far right, either.

One would have to be forgiven if they thought that this implied, in its very wording, an actual bias toward the far right which is what many already believe.

Ending his three-tweet soufflé on the flat “Let’s have less hate and more love” the responses, not surprisingly, were a very loving mix of WTF and ????

To be fair, there were also lots like this:

And this:

But, the way his tweets were so oddly posted, there was definitely a sense among “lefties” that he was biased. And it didn’t take a genius, but merely @cjwalker21, to retort:

It actually seems odd, that Elon Musk would wade (or dive head first) into a “left vs. right” argument that has no hope of any kind of resolution. And pretending that the disagreements are equal on some level and love can just be ratcheted up as if it was cheap rocket fuel, seems odd…

Then, in what’s gotta qualify as “far left’ in Elon’s book, this gem:

https://twitter.com/Grizzy_333/status/1520210804330704897?s=20&t=4N4AdzxcqVPa3BiO9XkCjg

Honestly, if you just look at the numbers, maybe you don’t see taxes as the answer, but considering the company Elon is in (Zuckerberg and Bezos?) there’s clearly something wrong with this picture?

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Elon Musk, Twitter

Everybody either Hates or Loves that Elon Musk bought Twitter: Everybody’s Wrong

Even for Twitter the reaction is bizarre to the extreme

Wow. The big news came, simple and straightforward, on Monday afternoon. Eastern time. From the official press release: “Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction”

What came next was a tsunami of extreme emotions – mostly negative by casual observation. The happiest seemed to be MAGA dreamers that somehow think that Elon Musk will be all about enabling Trump and his minions to get back into social media shenanigans, a.k.a. “free speech’. Which is, to put it mildly, doubtful.

To get the color of this intense reaction here are just a few example headlines:

Oddly, the most ferocious detractors of this deal are the “left” and those that are also believing the nonsense that somehow this is a big win for the right and for Trump (huh?) and therefore – the friend of my enemy is my enemy, or some such thing.

‘A Real Threat to Democracy’

We All Know Elon Musk Is Buying Twitter To Help Him Get Away With Stock Fraud, Right?

“Why the oligarch Elon Musk is a threat to independent media’

and so on

Then the oddly stilted semi-jubilation from the right:

https://twitter.com/crimsonjester/status/1518787555835056129?s=20&t=LX-W1cn7nl8vtM6CQdzixg

Naturally, Trump says he would not tweet again even if invited since he has his own useless and failed app. This is the basic problem of 90% of the reactions – the more extreme they are the more ridiculous the assumptions as to what Elon Musk will actually do.

Bots, often controlled by foreign actors, were the issue in 2020, not the tweets by actual people

If you were on twitter in 2020 during the run-up to the election, or in 2016 for that matter, the biggest issue was not the real tweets from Trump and others of his ilk, no matter how stupid and deranged those tweets were.

It was, instead, the thousands of fake accounts amplifying the “message” and creating a wall of lies and disinformation. Those bots would attack any anti-Trump or Pro-Biden (or Pro-Hillary) tweets and applaud all pro-Trump messages with likes, re-tweets etc. And they still exist to today.

They were ridiculously obvious as fake, for anyone who bothered to check, but the massive number and the fact they they were allowed to run-rampant made this stupid, primitive method of perverting actual free speech and behavior bizarrely successful.

This is just one small point. The idea that Elon Musk bought Twitter so that he can re-instate Trump and his bot-army goes against literally everything that is known about him as well as what he has actually said.

Of course anyone can say that Musk is not sincere, etc. But stating unequivocally that he will defeat the bots is a step in the right direction. Bots and fake accounts are epidemic in all social media and are likely tolerated for nefarious reasons – the least negative of which would be that it’s too expensive to care.

The fact that he would make mention of the “shadow ban council” also shows an awareness of the problems associated with algorithms that have agendas that punish and shadow ban at the whim of those in charge as being important- < it is > – that’s a huge plus, at least in terms of transparency or dialog about actual problems that exist.

And let’s not forget that Elon Musk is not beholden to a specific political party (everyone accuses him of being on the other side or of being a libertarian, and that maybe a good fit for some of his expressed views, but he has not specifically aligned himself with a particular party).

What this all boils down to – as alluded to in the title, is that there’s a strong sense that nearly all these opinions and much of the outrage is dead wrong about what will actually happen.

Can Elon Musk ‘Fix’ Twitter?

It would be equally insane, however, to assume that anyone, even the world’s richest person, can just buy Twitter, or any other huge tech platform (Web2 platform) and then fix all the problems.

Can anyone even agree on what Twitter is or what it should be? And so many of the problems that twitter has are baked-in to the whole huge-Web2-platform-defacto-monopoly thing that makes life online so frustrating and, at times, hopeless.

But what a private company, run by a “brash” gazillionaire is, at least, is something different. Well, sort of. That’s where it comes down to a probably crazy experiment in just how much worse can it get… Zuckerberg, Bezos, the Google Twins? Tough acts to follow?

Some have pointed out that Elon Musk will have even more power and control over Twitter than, for example, Zuckerberg has over FaceBook-er-Meta. And that is, for some, a scary and infuriating concept. On the other hand, what if more control, in the hands of someone who at least appears to have a sincere desire to see Twitter succeed as a “Town Square” and communication tool for humanity is actually what it takes to get things on the road to betterville…?

It’s hard to give a guy with $350 billion the benefit of the doubt, I get it

In other words, instead of seeing Twitter as a battleground between left and right, where one or the other should “win”, there is at least the possibility that Elon Musk sees it as much more than that.

That he sees it a bit closer to what it was created to be – a tool for people to communicate is a novel way.

Call it micro-blogging or shit-posting or memeifycation of life or what you will, the idea is, that if it were possible to create a tool that did indeed allow and even encourage actual online free speech is one that could at least be an experiment worth trying.

Is ‘this guy’ the right person to do it? Maybe not. Is a public company, with the explicit primary goal of enriching shareholders a better way? Not so far in any known example.

In fact this seems to be the ‘secret’ that is hiding in plain sight, that an altruistic goal by a super-rich private individual who decides to take over a social media company, to try to do something never done before – might actually be exactly what it takes to begin a new way for people to communicate online.

And, regardless of how skeptical we may be of that idea, the fact is that extreme change is urgently needed – leads to the reality that anything new and different should at least be tolerated and tried before it is condemned and attacked.

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Elon Musk, Twitter

Elon Musk owns Twitter after $44 Billion: What’s Next?

Video

Freedom of Speech is declared driving force for Takeover

Twitter Inc. announced that it has agreed to be acquired by an entity that is wholly owned by Elon Musk. The news comes after it was widely leaked that negotiations were underway over the weekend and that a deal was imminent.

Going forward the company will be privately held and current stockholders will be compensated at $54.20 for each share of common stock that they own as of completion of the deal. This represents a 38% premium over the closing price on April 1st when Musk’s 9% stake was announced.

The board voted unanimously to the proposal and, though subject to the approval of Twitter’s shareholders, and applicable regulatory approvals the agreement is expected to go through in 2022.

What will follow is unknown, but speculation is rampant

Since the announcement on April 1st that Elon Musk had purchased approximately 9% of Twitter and this Saga began, there has been a busier than usual frenzy of speculation regarding the possibility that has now come to pass.

On the most superficial level, there was an odd kind of measured jubilation on the political Right, with speculation that Musk might re-instate Trump and others who have been permanently banned (although Trump himself indicated that he would decline if invited back) and a sense of horror on the Left – with an implied mistrust of the world’s richest human, connecting this situation to ongoing debates over wealth taxes and economic inequality overall.

On a deeper track are those closer to the situation – such as Jack Dorsey, who expressed support and openly criticized the current board and public structure in elucidating tweets, such as the one below.

Looking back at some of the harmony and love shared over bitcoin and other major topics an alliance, or at least a consulting status for @Jack could be amazing in terms of what could come of this – a private Twitter with Musk at the helm, in terms of a new direction for social media and all online business and how they evolve going forward.

While it may seem presumptuous to think it won’t be a disaster, there are deeper issues that would indicate that a lot more thought might have gone into this than a superficial look reveals.

Elon Musk has proved, and explained to anyone that will listen, that his motives and goals for any business endeavor are in a new category of entrepreneur, and his success, often against incredible odds, are a testament to the power of this mindset.

With Tesla, he took on nothing less than the most powerful, entrenched (and arguably corrupt) special interest group in history, the fossil fuel industry, and somehow, due perhaps as much to timing as to any particular strategy or plan, prevailed.

That this takeover could mark the beginning of real change in “Web2” and social media, regarding of the risk of a private individual excepting near absolute control, it is a welcome change, based on the reality that the status quo, at Twitter and basically all the so-called internet giants could not be any worse.

Let’s hope that the public and very visible lead up to this deal will be followed in the near future by a continuation of that openness and that changes and plans will be announced as they happen, which would be entertaining at the least, and exhilarating at best.

There’s a lot more to unpack in this, not just in the reactions and opinions that will surely flood now that the next step is upon us. but in a fruitful and valuable deeper look into the real motivations and potential of this new deal.

For that, please stay tuned, and for now, please let me know what you think about Twitter’s decision and new owner.

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Business, Elon Musk

Do poison pills work? A finance expert explains the anti-takeover tool that Twitter hopes will keep Elon Musk at bay

Poison pills usually work, but Elon Musk appears undeterred. screenshot from china launch video

Tuugi Chuluun, Loyola University Maryland

Takeovers are usually friendly affairs. Corporate executives engage in top-secret talks, with one company or group of investors making a bid for another business. After some negotiating, the companies engaged in the merger or acquisition announce a deal has been struck.

But other takeovers are more hostile in nature. Not every company wants to be taken over. This is the case with Elon Musk’s US$43 billion bid to buy Twitter.

Companies have various measures in their arsenal to ward off such unwanted advances. One of the most effective anti-takeover measures is the shareholder rights plan, also more aptly known as a “poison pill.” It is designed to block an investor from accumulating a majority stake in a company.

Twitter adopted a poison pill plan on April 15, 2022, shortly after Musk unveiled his takeover offer in a Securities and Exchange filing.

I’m a scholar of corporate finance. Let me explain why poison pills have been effective at warding off unsolicited offers, at least until now.

What’s a poison pill?

Poison pills were developed in the early 1980s as a defense tactic against corporate raiders to effectively poison their takeover efforts – sort of reminiscent of the suicide pills that spies supposedly swallow if captured.

There are many variants of poison pills, but they generally increase the number of shares, which then dilutes the bidder’s stake and causes them a significant financial loss.

Let’s say a company has 1,000 shares outstanding valued at $10 each, which means the company has a market value of $10,000. An activist investor purchases 100 shares at the cost of $1,000 and accumulates a significant 10% stake in the company. But if the company has a poison pill that is triggered once any hostile bidder owns 10% of its stock, all other shareholders would suddenly have the opportunity to buy additional shares at a discounted price – say, half the market price. This has the effect of quickly diluting the activist investor’s original stake and also making it worth a lot less than it was before.

Twitter adopted a similar measure. If any shareholder accumulates a 15% stake in the company in a purchase not approved by the board of directors, other shareholders would get the right to buy additional shares at a discount, diluting the 9.2% stake Musk recently purchased.

Poison pills are useful in part because they can be adopted quickly, but they usually have expiration dates. The poison pill adopted by Twitter, for example, expires in one year.

A successful tactic

Many well-known companies such as Papa John’s, Netflix, JCPenney and Avis Budget Group have used poison pills to successfully fend off hostile takeovers. And nearly 100 companies adopted poison pills in 2020 because they were worried that their careening stock prices, caused by the pandemic market swoon, would make them vulnerable to hostile takeovers.

No one has ever triggered – or swallowed – a poison pill that was designed to fend off an unsolicited takeover offer, showing how effective such measures are at fending off takeover attempts.

These types of anti-takeover measures are generally frowned upon as a poor corporate governance practice that can hurt a company’s value and performance. They can be seen as impediments to the ability of shareholders and outsiders to monitor management, and more about protecting the board and management than attracting more generous offers from potential buyers.

However, shareholders may benefit from poison pills if they lead to a higher bid for the company, for example. This may be already happening with Twitter as another bidder – a $103 billion private equity firm – may have surfaced.

A poison pill isn’t foolproof, however. A bidder facing a poison pill could try to argue that the board is not acting in the best interests of shareholders and appeal directly to them through either a tender offer – buying shares directly from other shareholders at a premium in a public bid – or a proxy contest, which involves convincing enough fellow shareholders to join a vote to oust some or all of the existing board.

And judging by his tweets to his 82 million Twitter followers, that seems to be what Musk is doing.

[Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter.]

Tuugi Chuluun, Associate Professor of Finance, Loyola University Maryland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Apps, Elon Musk, Social Media, Twitter

New Elon Musk tweets Confirm he will not be a Silent Stakeholder: Board Seat Declined

In another weekend explosion, this time, revealing the hands on bent of ideas for TWX project

Once again the weekend is seeing a barrage of tweets from Elon Musk, this time with a solid bulls-eye on Twitter itself and changes he has on his wishlist. Implementation schedule appears to be, well, immediate.

https://bookshop.org/a/565/9780553418835

The first tweet we are featuring was a preview of just how much of an activist shareholder he is planning to be.

Looking forward to the first board meeting he will attend since his $2.9 billion 9.2% stake in the bird platform – Musk reposted a meme of his infamous “Ganja weed” interview – essentially creating an instant meme of memes:

**note – on Sunday night (April 10th, 2022) it was revealed that Elon Musk joining the board would not be a thing, after all. Most likely reason sited in the avalanche of reactions? A board seat would have capped the maximum investment / stake percentage at 14.9% and brought potentail legal issues. As the largest shareholder the door remains open to his acquiring the company outright, and continuing the activist direction clearly indicated in the tweets below…

Next, the constructive criticism started, first taking note (perhaps already up his sleeve as he contemplated shelling out 3 bil of pocket change) of how many of the accounts with the most followers post “very little content”. Summing up his thoughts with the question “Is Twitter dying?”

Next, in replies to himself he got granular, citing two very specific examples, how @taylorswift13 and @justinbieber are remiss when it comes to staying active and tweeting on a regular basis…

Apparently, the day was just beginning to get interesting, cause he posted a Yogi Berra-like conundrum next, pointing out that statistics, including this very one, presumably, are very often false. Posted at 1:14 PM he may have had a siesta and found himself ready to rumble cause with the next tweet at 5:03 PM things started to cook…

He dug into his infographic trove of insights and pulled out this re-tweeted gem, showing how the Weather Channel is distrusted by nearly 50% of Republicans and about 35% percent of Democrats.

This tweet is an interesting one as there has been a lot of hand wringing and dire predictions made in the “media” that Elon Musk, known as having a Libertarian prediliction, will somehow be Trump’s savior and that his idea of “free speech” is similar to those that are somewhere to the Right of Q-anon.

This, I would venture, is highly unlikely. It’s far more likely that his idea of free speech might actually be closer to, well what it sounds like, less censorship. Oddly both the left and the right are anticipating disappointment, and perhaps, that is one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for things.

The tweets of April 9th, seem to bear out the idea that he will be active, vocal and, above all, amusing, but unlikely to follow any faction or party.

Next came more specific and sort of practical tweets, like this one suggesting twitter “sell” the authentication checkmark as part of the Twitter Blue $3 subscription package. This, bizarrely, is a great business concept, and might actually happen, crazy as it sounds.

After reflecting briefly on the idea, it became clear that the invention of a new plebian version of the coveted mark is needed, lest it be confused with the rare and hard to acquire “public figure” or “official” accounts.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512957577092608004?s=21&t=p5FTMofYfTHgM4X5Gm2n8Q

A quick followup tweet with self replies included the observation that the edit tweet feature that has had much action this week is already a done deal in the future paid Twitter landscape.

Then, as if out of the blue like a bolt of lightening Elon decides that there should be no ads! Ok, so this does make sense in a genius billionaire kind-of-way here’s the new breakdown:

  1. Everybody pays $3 per moth
  2. Advertising is cancelled
  3. We all get checkmarks and an edit tweet feature
  4. Corporations stop “dictating policy”
  5. Twitter SF HQ is converted into a homeless shelter (unhoused refuge)
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512962115270754306?s=21&t=p5FTMofYfTHgM4X5Gm2n8Q

Good idea?:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512966135423066116?s=21&t=p5FTMofYfTHgM4X5Gm2n8Q

Then, in a semi-final, inspired burst of sunshine, there’s a great suggestion – actually a tweet from earlier in the am – 7:39 to be exact but pinned for now, the man who must be heeded points out that “crypto scam accounts” represent a large percentage that should be subtracted from the real accounts. ow if they can just remove the 3 billion fake accounts across all social media…

Apparently not able to quit while ahead, or maybe under the influence of jet lag or substances, this gem dropped:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1513045405029711878?s=21&t=Rw_ry5HVOGgsmXRxJJzSbA

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