Does anyone say no to the world’s richest person, Elon Musk? You may think not, as the pages and pages of text exchanges between Musk and his mates have shown in recent days.
But despite the “yes” men surrounding and texting him — constantly — Musk’s attempts to get out of his acquisition of Twitter have seemingly failed, with the Tesla founder set to go ahead with the US$44 billion buyout move.
Musk’s lawyers have today written to Twitter, offering to pay his initial price of $54.20 a share, with the offer coming just prior to Musk being due to appear in a US court on the 17th October, where he was expected to have little chance of succeeding in his bid to get out of the deal.
Twitter had been suing Musk in Delaware, where the social media giant is incorporated, after Musk made an offer to buy the company back in mid April this year, signed some paperwork, and then later reneged on the idea, sending the Twitter share price tumbling.
Earlier this week, the release of Musk’s text messages concerning the deal revealed a long lineup of rich and power-hungry individuals pandering to Musk. The 40 pages of text exchanges released were all sent in the first half of this year, during a period when Musk bought an increasing stake in Twitter and made his buyout offer.
Among the standout texters were the friends stroking his ego. The wannabe investors trying to get involved. And those praising his push for “liberation” and “free speech!”
It was, overall, a lineup of “embarrassing friends”, as a number of major publications referred to those texting Musk. The Atlantic described how the content shared shattered, “the myth of the tech genius.”
There was Oracle co-founder and well-known Trump supporter Larry Ellison, who asked to “chat” with Musk, saying “I do think we need another Twitter.” Ellison would later offer to chip in “a billion… or whatever you recommend” – nice to have a friend on call who can pitch in such figures.
There was Twitter co founder Jack Dorsey, who told Musk, “I couldn’t be happier you’re doing this” and declared he got “emotional” on learning it was possible.
There were plenty of others egging him on, “why don’t you buy Twitter?” asked the CEO of a media group. “We run it for you,” the CEO then helpfully offered.
There was podcaster Jo Rogan, who asked: “Are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob?” Of which Musk replied that he will “provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow”.
There was Tim Urban, who asked Musk to appear on his podcast – that he hasn’t “officially started” yet but is happy to do so if Musk thinks it would be helpful.
There were many, many other CEOs and investors and hangers-on hoping to be helpful, and seemingly wanting to get a slice of the most powerful potential acquisition pie going around, or to at least stay within Musk’s influential spotlight.
If this chapter closes – with Twitter agreeing to accept the proposal which may take another day or so given the lack of trust between the two parties – then so will begin a new chapter, in which Musk gets to officially make his mark on Twitter and aim to fulfill his promises on promoting free speech.
Musk had initially said on making the Twitter offer that the wanted to get rid of the automated and fake accounts, relax content restrictions and enable more “free speech”. He still hasn’t said much about aiming to remove the trolls from the platform, which has seen numerous commentators and journalists leaving the platform.
We now have a real chance to see what Musk has in store and his ideas on how to run Twitter, although his own account gives some indication, which includes his latest efforts of publishing a poll regarding his idea for a “Russia-Ukraine Peace” deal. Musk has also previously tweeted a poo emoji at Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, when Agrawal posted a thread explaining how Twitter tries to detect spam accounts. He’s gone to war with fellow billionaires including Jeff Bezos, where the pair sniped over who holds the number one spot of being the world’s richest person.
Overall, the Twitter project is set to be an expensive side hustle for Musk, which comes in addition to him leading the world’s largest and most innovative car manufacturer in Tesla, as well as rocket and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX, and tunneling firm, the Boring Company. He won’t be short of e’ll have plenty of mates keen to egg him on and help out where they can.