Elon Musk has long said he doesn’t want to buy Twitter.
In July 2022, three months after his $44 billion takeover attempt, he asked his lawyers to draft a letter to get out of the deal. Twitter, at the time preparing for life under Musk’s rule, sued the entrepreneur, forcing him to make a bold purchase.
But in a hastily orchestrated live interview with the BBC this week, in which Musk struggled to ignore questions and play with his 134 million active followers on the platform, Musk reiterated that he wouldn’t have completed the deal if he didn’t. . forced by the chance to lose in court.
Musk admitted that managing Twitter has been “pretty painful” and “really quite a stressful situation in the last few months.” The entrepreneur said he would occasionally sleep in the company’s offices to keep the site up and running and has struggled to maintain standards as he reduced the workforce from 8,000 when he took over to around 1,500 now.
The entrepreneur was quick to play down problems with the site, preventing users from tweeting at critical times and misrepresenting content as temporary issues that were quickly fixed as they arose. The site is working well at the moment, he said lamely.
Musk even admitted to selling the puppy when answering questions about statements he made in December that he would step down as CEO of Twitter as soon as he found a suitable replacement, saying that his dog now leads Twitter.
It was an interview that revealed the challenges Musk is facing. Just a year ago, Musk seemed burdened with the responsibility of running the platform. referred to as the “de facto public town square”. – which begs the question, what will happen next?
“We saw a more human side [to Musk]said Bruce Daisley, a former head of Twitter in Europe who left the company long before Musk announced the takeover. Musk is also “more error-prone,” said Daisley, who admitted he bought the company because he was effectively forced by a court but was “as inconsistent as ever.”
All things considered, the move is an uphill battle,” said Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities.
“Musk has currently shut down Twitter and we believe its valuation is closer to $15 billion than the $44 billion purchase price,” he said. “It’s a buyer’s regret, but now Musk must try to reverse this ailing asset that is starting with a cash flow break-even on the horizon” (Musk said in an interview with the BBC, without any proof, that Twitter is “close to breaking even to reach” after like the advertisers who left the platform at the start of his tenure are now returning.)
Ives believes that the trials and tribulations of running Twitter are still worth being an entrepreneur. “While Musk complains on Twitter, this has become a favorite project for him and gives him a big voice at the world table for what he loves,” he said.
However, there doesn’t seem to be a big plan to get Twitter back on track. Musk chose to dodge tough questions about the rise of hate speech on the platform and glitches in the underlying computer code — the latest leaked messages meant to be sent to a select group of users in random user channels. He reversed his tough stance, describing the BBC as a publicly funded broadcaster despite evidence to the contrary, pointing out how easily he lends himself to criticism.
A year after Musk first appeared on the horizon as a Twitter fan, he seems as disorganized as ever as Twitter continues to navigate increasingly turbulent waters.
His capture has always been described as chaos rather than theory. But as the social media platform comes under scrutiny more than ever given its direction and the central role it plays in our society, the stress is starting to show. If Musk thought it would be fun to run a large technology platform, he quickly realizes that this is far from the case.
And worst of all, he seems to stick with it. We should expect “more months of hesitation and hesitation,” Daisley said. “No one wants to buy it from him. That’s what he’s stuck on.”
“It’s been a real roller coaster ride,” Musk told the BBC in an interview this week. Whether he can steer the cart safely into the station or knock it off the rails is entirely up to him.