All Hail the Tweetlord

Twitter announced yesterday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, for ~$44 billion (a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1).

🐦 So, what’s next?... Not much is known about who will run the company or what it will actually look like. But upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately held company entirely at Musk’s disposal.

📱💬 Some of his proposed changes… Pieced together from tweets, regulatory filings, and an interview at a TED conference over the past few weeks:

• Twitter should soften its stance on content moderation.
• Create an edit feature for tweets.
• Make its algorithm open source and put the code on GitHub to increase trust.
• Give users who pay for Twitter Blue authentication check marks.
• Rely less on advertising.
• Implement more effective anti-bot and spam measures.

🤑 Money talks: The San Francisco-based social-media company was expected to rebuff the offer, which Musk initially made on April 14 without saying how he would pay for it, but changed its posture after the Technoking of Tesla detailed elements of his financing plan for the takeover, per the Wall Street Journal. On April 21, he said he had $46.5 billion in funding lined up. Twitter shares rose sharply, and company execs opened the door to negotiations.

• The $44 billion final price tag makes this the largest deal to take a company private in at least two decades, according to data compiled by Dealogic.