According to the Washington Post, Elon Musk is thinking of exiting the agreement, signed in mid-May, to buy Twitter for $ 44 billion.
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Twitter, the famous social network of the blue canary, in the past few hours has announced the extension to more users of an expected test underway since May: nevertheless, the platform co-founded by Jack Dorsey would have ended up at the center of attention for many others reasons, including new layoffs and the probable abandonment, by Elon Musk, of the intention to buy the Californian social network.
Starting from the “soap opera” relating to the acquisition, as is well known, on April 4 the billionaire Elon Musk announced that he had purchased 9.2% of the shares of the social network Twitter: shortly thereafter, faced with the proposal to sit on the relevant board of administration, the billionaire histrionic declined the invitation and, indeed, on April 14th he made a proposal to purchase 100% of the social network. After an initial negative reaction from the blue canary, on April 24th there was the closing, with the board of directors of the social network that approved Musk’s proposal, to buy Twitter for 44 billion dollars (which, later, found a way to put together ), inviting the shareholders (who will have to evaluate it later) to accept the acquisition, as it is advantageous (54.20 dollars per share, clearly higher than the 37 dollars of current value of the platform’s shares).
After some time, Musk announced that he had suspended the acquisition process, as he was not convinced of the figures provided by the counterpart, according to which less than 5% of the accounts would be fake or formed by Bots: specifically, the perplexities of the original entrepreneur South African can be explained by the fact that the platform’s revenue derives from advertising and that, consequently, with fewer real users, the audience of advertising targets would be less (bots, as is well known, do not make purchases). After a hard-fought back and forth, Twitter has decided to provide Elon Musk with the requested data, in an increasingly in-depth form.
According to the Washington Post, which cited three independent sources, anonymous but aware of the plans of the entrepreneur who evidently would not be able to deduce the real number of fake accounts from the information received, Musk is trying to get out of an agreement. considered inconvenient by now (in the past it was hypothesized, after some of his statements at a technology convention in Miami, that he wanted to get a discount): confirming this rumor, the Post would report that discussions on the financing of the acquisition with the partners of the initiative (the state fund of Qatar, the co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, the venture capital companies Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, etc).
At this point, it is not clear how Musk can withdraw from the agreement, if not by paying the expected penalty, equal to 1 billion dollars, even in the face of the blockade of Twitter which, intending to enforce the signed agreement, in a conference call with the media, in the past few hours, extolling its spam account removal system (which would be able to mow down 1 million fake accounts a day, despite talking about half a million a few weeks ago), reiterated the estimate less than 5% of fake accounts.
Another trouble for Twitter came from its human resources department, which – in line with other hi-tech giants – has decided to freeze the hiring of new figures and talents, thanks to the crisis in the sector and the period of macro-recession. economic: in this regard, according to TechCrunch, Twitter has fired 30% (not quantified in absolute figures) of its recruiting department, with all the professionals involved who will be left at home with a severance pay and the rest that will be destined for other tasks.
Turning to less dramatic news on Twitter, the social network – after starting to test it with a small number of users in May – in recent days (according to Mashable) has extended the Circle function to more users, which allows you to share content with a restricted circle of users who, according to the platform’s FAQ, cannot share the tweets of our Circle on the public timeline of the social network, or in their own Circle.
