Around April this year, tech billionaire and owner of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, announced that he was putting up a bid to buy the popular Blue Bird App (Twitter) for 44 billion dollars.
For the past two months, there has been rising speculation that the billionaire might not buy the company anymore.
At the Qatar Economic Forum, Elon Musk mentioned that he is still interested in the app. He said he has come up with a plan to increase the number of Twitter users to 4 billion.
The billionaire also proposed a new deal to buy the app for 75% of his initial bid because he noticed the high number of fake accounts, which the Twitter board declined. He is still interested in buying the company if the Twitter board meets his requirements on fake or spam accounts, in which case there has been an improvement.
The board has agreed to show him how he can determine fake or spam accounts and access Twitter’s firehose because he claimed he could not increase the number of users if there were bots responsible for invasions of privacy, so Twitter has to be 100% reliable.
During the event, Elon Musk also pointed out that if he becomes the owner of the company, his focus will be more on increasing the app experience rather than running the company. He said he wants to be involved in driving the product rather than just assuming the role of CEO as he does at SpaceX and Tesla. Examples of ways the CEO wants to increase the app experience are: making the app not rely more on ads as the source of revenue but also allowing users to buy a blue tick membership at the rate of $2.5 and get a blue tick on their account, reducing board salary and using it to improve user experience, etc.
The billionaire also pointed out that if the deal happens, he will deal with the conflict of interest that might arise due to his involvement in China, and if he becomes CEO of Twitter, it won’t affect his business operations in China, where Twitter has been banned by the government, and it is also where a great part of the production of Tesla parts and vehicles happens. Even though other billionaires like Jeff Bezos feel like there will be a rise in conflicts of interest, Elon Musk is adamant about the success of their operations.
At first, the board was reluctant to grant him access to the data needed to back their claim. Due to their later compliance and Elon’s plans for Twitter makes it highly likely for the deal to happen. It is all a matter of when.
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