New episode in the soap opera of the purchase of Elon Musk from Twitter. The operation to acquire the social network for 44,000 million dollars is in danger, people close to the owner of Tesla have confirmed to Washington Post. The newspaper assures that the businessman is not convinced of the figures that the technology company has communicated to him about the number of false accounts on the platform. Musk had made it a requirement of the deal that spam account for less than 5% of Twitter users. The San Francisco company has defended its numbers, assuring reporters in a call that bots make up less than 5% of daily users.
Twitter has entered crisis mode following the Post’s exclusive reveal. It is not the first time that the operation has been questioned by the US press, which is increasingly skeptical that it will be closed. According to the newspaper, Musk’s team has put a brake on discussions with investors who were looking for schemes so that the tycoon would have enough liquidity to pay his offer of 54.20 dollars per share.
The millionaire would have put the brakes on because he considers that the information about bots and fake users reflects that the technology company does not have enough data to raise the commercial profile of the social network. This is one of the medium-term goals of Musk, who has briefly talked about some ideas to increase the monetization of Twitter. The businessman’s advisors believe that the figures provided by the company are not verifiable. Musk had already said a few weeks ago that he considers that this number of accounts would be around 20% of total users.
Twitter has attempted to respond to this. In a call with journalists, he has assured that it would be very difficult for an external auditor to corroborate the number that he has given to Musk. The figure, they argue, stems from a lot of private user information that Twitter doesn’t share. These include IP addresses, geolocation data and contact information such as mobile numbers or email addresses.
“Twitter has cooperated by sharing information with Mr. Musk, and will continue to do so, until the transaction is concluded in accordance with our merger agreement,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg after the exclusive published by the Post. “The deal is in the best interests of our investors. We intend to close the transaction with the agreed price and terms, ”said the spokesperson for the social network, which has previously explained that it deletes around a million false accounts every day. Most of them are not even seen on the platform by flesh and blood users.
The news briefly affected the price of the company’s shares, which fell as much as 4%, but have been recovering in recent hours after the Wall Street close, gaining 1.5%. The title closed the day with a value of 38.79 dollars.
mass layoff
Twitter has revealed this Thursday that it has fired 30% of the team in charge of acquisitions. The cuts come after the company announced in May that it had frozen new hiring while the Musk purchase operation unfolds. In accordance with The Wall Street Journalthe layoffs have been confirmed by the company and will affect an undetermined number, but less than 100 people.
In mid-June, Musk offered his first message to Twitter employees, known as tweeps. One of the main concerns of the 8,000 workers of the San Francisco company is that of cuts. The tycoon has criticized the management and performance of the company. “Right now, the costs outweigh the benefits, so it’s not a very good situation,” he limited himself to saying in the telematic conversation moderated by the head of Marketing. It was the most direct answer he could give even though he repeatedly tried to dodge the details. .
The owner of Tesla and SpaceX has said that he is interested in getting involved in the development of a product that he feels is wasted. Success, he assured him, would be an increase in the number of daily active users and reach 1,000 million users “or more”. The company currently has about 330 million monthly active users. No one seems to agree on the number of spam among them.
