Musk’s move, which was revealed in a regulatory statement, comes shortly after he tweeted that he was seriously considering building a new social media platform, while questioning Twitter’s commitment to freedom of speech. A poll was also launched asking Twitter users if they wanted an edit button, a long-awaited feature that the social networking platform works on. This was followed by CEO Parag Agrawal, who urged users to “vote carefully”. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Within two hours of the start of the poll, more than 1.1 million users voted, with more than 75% of them supporting an editing option. Last week, in another poll, Musk asked if Twitter’s algorithm should be open source. More than 82% of users answered yes, while former CEO Jack Dorsey said, “the choice of algorithm to be used (or not) should be open to everyone.” A productive Twitter user, Musk has more than 80 million followers since joining the site in 2009 and has used the platform to make many announcements, including teasing a go-private deal for Tesla that led him to hot water. with regulatory authorities. Most recently, however, the world’s richest man has been critical of the social networking platform and its policies, and recently conducted a Twitter poll asking users if they thought the platform complied with the principle of freedom of speech, to which more than 70 % voted “no”. .” Read more In December, Musk published a memo comparing CEO Agrawal with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and showing Jack Dorsey as a close associate who was later executed. Twitter’s latest quarterly results and lower-than-expected user additions have raised doubts about its growth prospects, even as it seeks big projects such as audio chat rooms and newsletters to end long-term stagnation. “It sends a message on Twitter … having a substantial stake in the company will keep them at bay, because that passive stake could very quickly become an active stake,” said Thomas Hayes, chief executive of Great Hill Capital. LLC. Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a conversation with legendary game designer Todd Howard (not shown) at the E3 Game Conference in Los Angeles, California, USA, June 13, 2019. REUTERS / Mike Blake read more Musk – who, according to Forbes, has a net worth of about $ 300 billion – has been cutting his stake in Tesla since November, when he said he would land a 10% stake in electric cars. It has since sold $ 16.4 billion worth of stock. A regulatory filing on Monday showed that Musk owns 73.5 million shares in Twitter, which is owned by the revocable Elon Musk, of which he is the sole administrator. Vanguard is the second largest shareholder of Twitter, with a share of 8.79%, according to data from Refinitiv. Shares of Twitter rose 27.1% on Monday to close at $ 49.97. The stock, which had fallen 38 percent in the last 12 months to close on Friday, added as much as $ 8.38 billion to its market value on Monday, which now stands at $ 39.3 billion. BUY; “Musk’s real investment is a very small percentage of his wealth and a full acquisition should not be ruled out,” CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino wrote in a customer note. Twitter’s share is more likely to lead to positive outcomes for shareholders than to negatives, said Ryan Jacob, CEO of Jacob Asset Management, who said Twitter is one of the fund’s largest contributions. “If (Musk) decides to take an active position and Twitter becomes private, it will probably be at a higher price than it is now,” he said. “If other companies are interested (in acquiring Twitter), they will probably be at a higher price right now.” Musk has previously made early investments in companies including payment processing company Stripe Inc. and artificial intelligence company Vicarious. He is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX and leads the newly formed Neuralink brain chip company and infrastructure company Boring Company. Twitter was the target of activist investor Elliott Management Corp. in 2020, when the hedge fund claimed that the then boss and co-founder of the social networking company, Jack Dorsey, paid very little attention to Twitter and also owned what was then called Square Inc. SQ.N). Dorsey, who owns more than 2% of Twitter, resigned as CEO and chairman in November last year, handing over the reins to veteran Parag Agrawal. Meanwhile, Musk and Dorsey found common ground to reject Web3, a vague term for a utopian version of the decentralized Internet. read more Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Nivedita Balu, Eva Mathews, Akash Sriram, Praveen Paramasivam and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru. Additional references by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Hyun Joo Jin in San Francisco. Editing by Anil D’Silva, Matthew Lewis, Rashmi Aich and Arun Koyyur Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
