South Africa-born billionaire Elon Musk surprised the world recently by buying a 9.2% stake in the micro-blogging platform Twitter Inc. Interestingly, Musk’s Twitter investment became public just a week after he ran a Twitter poll questioning if the social media behemoth was rigorously adhering to the principles of free speech.
For Elon Musk, the last week has been very busy as he has been suggesting a plethora of changes to the workings of the micro-blogging platform, whose credibility has been at stake due to its left-leaning bias and arbitrary decision making.
From banning advertising to slashing its price, Musk has continuously dropped hints on how he wants to reshape Twitter.
Just hours after Musk’s Twitter purchase became public, the real-life Tony Stark took a cheeky dig at Twitter by tweeting, “Oh hi lol”. The tweet was meant to ridicule Twitter and its free speech standards. This tweet had come days after he had questioned the free speech policy of Twitter and also sought public views about the need for a new platform.
Perhaps, the multi-billionaire visionary inventor Elon Musk contemplated buying shares of Twitter after receiving a favourable response from the public.
After he became the biggest shareholder of Twitter, he posted a poll on the website asking users whether they wanted an edit button. His options are the misspelled “yse” and “on” to highlight the need for an edit button.
The idea was so revolutionary that it disrupted the existing system at Twitter Inc, pushing CEO Parag Agarwal to caution Twitter users to vote carefully on the poll by the eccentric billionaire. Agarwal said that the consequences of this poll would be important.
For years now, Twitter users have asked for an edit button, however, the micro-blogging site has remained immune to those requests.
Two days later, Elon Musk continued to troll Twitter by pushing his maverick ideas to change how Twitter functions. It looks like Elon Musk is hell-bent on introducing the edit button on the micro-blogging site.
Musk had tweeted a meme that also teased Twitter regarding the edit button being added to Twitter. The tweet depicts how Musk selling his first company Zip2 to Compaq for $305 million in 1999 led to Twitter finally getting an edit button.
Elon Musk’s tweets around it forced even Twitter to confirm that it was indeed working on an edit button.
“Now that everyone is asking… yes, we’ve been working on an edit feature since last year! No, we didn’t get the idea from a poll. We’re kicking off testing within Twitter Blue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible,” tweeted Twitter Communication.
Musk’s madness did not stop there. Elon Musk again took to Twitter to state that he was excited to be present at the next board meeting.
“Twitter’s next board meeting is going to be lit”, he tweeted last week featuring his famous pot-smoking meme from Joe Rogan podcast in 2018.
Two days later, Elon Musk shared another tweet to point out some statistics to ask whether Twitter was dying as the most-followed people on Twitter hardly tweet.
Sharing a list of the top 10 most-followed personalities on Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk pointed out that most celebrities tweet “rarely and post very little content”. He poignantly asked whether Twitter was dying?
The list by World of Statistics has former US President Barack Obama at the top and Elon Musk at the eighth spot. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also features right below the Tesla CEO on the list. Others include entertainers like Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihana, football star Cristiano Ronaldo, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Ellen DeGeneres.
He also pointed out how celebrities such as Taylor Swift tweeted three months back and pop-artist Justin Bieber only a year before.
Besides poking fun at Twitter, Musk also shared some profound ideas, such as an authentication checkmark for everyone who pays $3 for signing up for Twitter blue. He also suggested that Twitter should not depend just on advertising money to survive as it enhances the “power of corporations to dictate policy”.
Twitter Blue, which was launched in June 2021, is Twitter’s first subscription service and offers exclusive access to premium features on a monthly subscription basis. It is available only in select countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Musk even promised his long term adversary, Dr. Michael Burry of Big Short fame, that he will get his blue tick back even though he shorted Tesla’s stock
On Sunday, Musk again held a poll that took a swipe at Twitter employees in San Francisco. He asked whether the headquarters there should be converted into a homeless shelter since “no one shows up (for work) anyway”.
Nearly 10,91,908 users voted in the poll, wherein 91% said ‘yes’ and just 9% said ‘no’.
The madness continued as Musk also shared more of his wild ideas in his latest polls that he held on Twitter.
In his recent poll, he suggested a name change, asking whether it was time to remove the “w” in “Twitter”. The billionaire gave voters two choices: “yes” and “of course”.
If changed, the new name would be “Titter”. More than 56 percent of the voters wanted “Twitter” to be the named without a “w”, the rest said, “Of course”.
Long-term followers of the richest man on the planet will know that these tweets are very much in character for him, Musk has always been very cavalier with his Twitter feed. Whether it helps Twitter or not, either ways there are some interesting times ahead with the microblogging site.