The Musk Twitter saga hits an impasse

Billionaire Elon Musk is unconvinced by claims that less than 5% of Twitter users are fake or spam and seems set to abandon his acquisition bid.

Scott Bicheno

May 17, 2022

2 Min Read
The Musk Twitter saga hits an impasse

Billionaire Elon Musk is unconvinced by claims that less than 5% of Twitter users are fake or spam and seems set to abandon his acquisition bid.

Musk first voiced his concern, via Twitter of course, late last week.

View post on Twitter

It’s not clear what prompted these concerns at this late stage. Presumably Musk has received some intelligence suggesting a larger proportion of Twitter users are fake or spam, which caused him to reappraise the deal. The social media business model consists of selling advertisers access to its users, but if a lot of those are not economically viable – i.e. there’s no chance of flogging anything to them – then the offering is weakened.

View post on Twitter

In a clear sign of the times, the subsequent dialogue between Musk and Twitter is also being conducted in public. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal posted a thread about spam, in an apparently failed attempt to address Musk’s concerns.

View post on Twitter

View post on Twitter

View post on Twitter

It’s so hard to guess what is really going on here. Should we just take Musk at face value or is this all part of an underlying cunning plan? Is he just setting the scene to lower his bid or has he gone off the whole idea and is now looking for a way to bail out while saving face and money?

On one level all this nit-picking over the underlying financials would appear to jar with Musk’s stated reason for buying Twitter, which is to improve the digital public square. If instead he means it as a simple financial investment then why not say so? Then again, if Twitter is intrinsically less valuable as a going concern than it would have us believe, Musk is entitled to rethink his offer. Either way, anyone excited by the prospect of a Musk-owned Twitter will be hoping they resolved their differences.

 

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About the Author

Scott Bicheno

As the Editorial Director of Telecoms.com, Scott oversees all editorial activity on the site and also manages the Telecoms.com Intelligence arm, which focuses on analysis and bespoke content.
Scott has been covering the mobile phone and broader technology industries for over ten years. Prior to Telecoms.com Scott was the primary smartphone specialist at industry analyst Strategy Analytics’. Before that Scott was a technology journalist, covering the PC and telecoms sectors from a business perspective.
Follow him @scottbicheno

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