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Elon Musk walked into Twitter headquarters on Wednesday with a sink in his hands.
Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter on Thursday and fired its top executives, according to US media.
The transaction concerned US$44 billion just hours before deadline for the billionaire to seal his agreement to buy the social network.
Musk’s early moves to head Twitter included the dismissal of CEO Parag Agrawalwho went to court to force the Tesla boss to honor the terms of a takeover deal he had been trying to escape, the Washington Post and CNBC reported, citing unnamed sources.
Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal was also fired.
Musk, the richest person in the world, said Twitter needed major changes.
The deal’s closing ends a saga in which Musk offered to buy the company, then said he wanted to walk away, before Twitter began. legal action to compel business man to close the deal.
“It’s not about making money”
Musk tweeted Thursday that his interest in the platform Nope is by earn money.
Company shares they will stop trading on fridayaccording to the New York Stock Exchange website.
Musk maintained he bought it to help humanity, saying he wanted “civilization to have a numerical common square.”
On Wednesday, Musk tweeted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with a kitchen sink with the caption, “Let it sink!” In English, the noun to sink and the verb to sink, and their conjugation “to sink”, are the same word: sink.
He also changed his bio on Twitter and now says “Twit Boss”.
Many analysts have argued that the price Musk is currently paying for the company is too high given declining stock prices at tech companies and Twitter’s struggle to attract users and grow.
image sources, Getty Images
Musk, an active Twitter user, went back and forth before finalizing the purchase of the company.
During a recent conference call with investors, the Tesla founder said that Twitter is “a long languishing asset, but one with incredible potential.”
“Although obviously I and other investors are paying too much for Twitter right now,” he continued.
Long road to agreement
Musk’s early investments in Twitter initially escaped public notice.
In January, he started buying stock regularly, and by mid-March he had acquired a 5% stake in the company.
Musk said he plans to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform as a place for free speech.
But by mid-May Musk, a prolific Twitter user, had begun to change his mind about buying, fearing the number of fake accounts on the social network was higher than Twitter claimed.
In July, he said he no longer wanted to buy the company. The former owners, however, argued that the billionaire was legally bound to buy the business.
Twitter eventually filed a lawsuit to force him to honor the deal.
In early October, Musk relaunched his plan to buy the company on the condition that the legal proceedings were dropped.
image sources, AFP
Upcoming changes
Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, has criticized Twitter’s moderation policies and the news will be met with mixed feelings by Twitter users and employees.
Some users, particularly those on the American right, claim that conservative voices are censored on the platform, a charge Twitter denies.
Former President of the United States donald trump he remains banned from the platform, a move Musk previously called “stupid” and would reverse.
But others fear that the relaxation of moderation policies could allow hate speech to proliferate.
In Thursday’s tweet, addressed to Twitter advertisers, Musk said the platform could not become “free hell for all” and needed to be “warm and welcoming to all”.
As owner of Twitter, Musk is planning big changes for staff. Although the billionaire denied that he would cut 75% of staff during a meeting with employees, as reported by Bloomberg, working at Twitter now could become more difficult.
The Tesla CEO has tweeted in the past that employees should anticipate “extreme” work ethic expectations.
The businessman also posted that among his plans for Twitter is “X, the app for everything“.
Some suggest it could be something similar to China’s hit WeChat app, a sort of “super app” that integrates different services including messaging, social media, payments and food ordering.
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