Elon Musk has confirmed that he will buy Twitter, but is not very reassuring about his future. The billionaire presents Twitter as the foundation of a new application called “X” after having long promised that he was coming to improve the social network.
Time travel does exist. The proof, on Tuesday October 4th, we jumped back 5 months. Elon Musk, at war with Twitter for several months, finally decided to return to his initial proposal, namely a takeover of the social network with an exit from the stock market. The billionaire poses a single condition to acquire Twitter: the social network must withdraw its complaint and cancel the lawsuit. In other words, nothing is done yet.
However, given the many twists and turns of recent months and the very upcoming (October 17) trial that would certainly have seen Elon Musk lose, it is likely that this second takeover of Twitter will go to the end. Twitter has already given the green light, while Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter that all this was real (he had also put money aside in recent months). However, his speech has evolved somewhat. The “savior of Twitter” now seems to consider the social network as the technical basis for its future own platform.
Elon Musk, from savior to destroyer
To better understand the evolution of Elon Musk’s thoughts, let’s go back to the very beginning. As private text messages recently revealed to us, the idea of buying up Twitter was slipped into Elon Musk’s head by his friends in March 2022. When one of them suggested that he “buy Twitter to delete it”, Elon Musk replied that he had much more laudable intentions: “Perhaps redeem him to change him and make him respect freedom of expression? ».
Elon Musk then took action by approaching the management of Twitter, who instead welcomed him with open arms. Jack Dorsey, the creator of the social network, then painted a very chaotic picture of his business. Suggested to him to create a new decentralized social network. Elon Musk, much more optimistic, said he still believed that Twitter could be saved without having to start from scratch.
Several months later, after dozens of insulting messages to Twitter and its management, Elon Musk no longer seems to be on the same wavelength. The entrepreneur, who has often declared his love for the social network, is not yet ready to say good things about Twitter. What he proposes is more radical and above all more in line with what his relatives and Jack Dorsey suggested to him at the very beginning: raze everything to rebuild everything. Elon Musk wants to recover the Twitter teams to create his new platform called X, which should logically take over from the social network.
Asked by a follower about the point of spending $43 billion on such a project, when he could create ‘X’ out of thin air, Elon Musk says buying Twitter probably saves him between 3 and 5 year. However, we feel the boss of Tesla and SpaceX unconvinced by his own words, since he adds an astonishing “but I could be wrong”. Coming from the man who tweeted his solution to the Ukrainian conflict the day before without any questioning, we can see a form of non-conviction there. Elon Musk no doubt feels trapped with this takeover from which he can no longer withdraw.
Why X? For the record, this is the name of one of the first companies of Elon Musk, which then merged with Confinity to become a certain PayPal. This name is dear to Elon Musk who bought the domain name X.com in 2017, which only displays an “x” when everything is working, and a “y” when there is a bug. Making X the name of Twitter’s replacement would make sense in his personal story, even if there’s no telling he’ll go that far.
Twitter soon to be replaced by a Western WeChat?
Precisely, let’s talk about this famous project X. In the head of Elon Musk, this idea is not new. Fascinated by Tencent’s WeChat application, which allows you to do everything in China (messaging, social networks, payment, official papers, etc.), Elon Musk had already mentioned this idea during a question and answer session with employees. from Twitter on June 16, 2022.
” In China, you basically live on WeChat, because it’s very useful in your daily life. And I think if we could achieve that, or even come close to it with Twitter, that would be a huge success. »
At the time, Elon Musk touted this inspiration from WeChat as a way to make Twitter better. What has changed in October 2022 is that he no longer seems to view Twitter as the platform of the future. His copy of WeChat would replace the social network…unless he changed his mind again and his tweet just went off on a whim.
What will happen now? We have no idea, since Elon Musk himself probably doesn’t know what he’s going to do. If the takeover goes to the end, it will be necessary to scrutinize carefully the people that Elon Musk will appoint at the head of the social network, while it was whispered a few months ago that he had plans to take control. Is the return of the idyll between Musk and Twitter possible, or is the future owner of Twitter doomed to hate him?