So, as far as the timeline is concerned, we’re at a point wherein we are absolutely unaware of what will happen with Twitter. Apparently, one of the platforms which people use for staying updated with the world is getting some updates of its own. And it’s clearly not making everyone happy…
Everything about a $44 Billion deal suddenly seems to be going wrong. We guess Murphy’s Law applies literally everywhere. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong and at the worst possible time. And well, go wrong, it did.
While Mr. Musk’s original idea was to bring back the freedom of expression and speech, the state of things and events that have conspired have taken a turn for, well, not the best. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said as he embarked on this revolutionary journey of buying it out. There were glitches, and there were some speedbumps, but in mid-2022 this deal was concluded and Elon Musk is now the owner of Twitter Inc.
Along with major lay-offs, substantial & crucial resignations and operational changes, there were some other reforms that he introduced-
- The work-from-office routine was brought back
- There were changes in the processes and ways in which coders work
- There were some major changes in the management
And here’s what the consequences of this deal were-
- A lot of celebrities left the platform
- Deactivated and suspended accounts emerged from the abyss
Apart from these, there was an elephant in the room- The blue tick subscription.
The birdie’s blue tick subscription seemed simple at first. Wish to make your account official on Twitter? Pay an $8 fee every month. Nominal, doable and affordable.
What could go wrong, right?
Apparently a lot. What they failed to deduce is that anyone can get it and create a nightmare for bigger and medium-sized brands on the platform. This turned out to become an official way to plan malicious activities. One such instance was the Eli Lily Debacle. Eli Lilly is an American pharmaceutical company. A fake yet verified account of the same name tweeted “We are excited to announce that insulin is free now.”. People saw the name, they saw the tick and they read the tweet. This lead to a drop of 4.45% in the company stock and there was some obvious damage control. Another mishap was an account posing as banana producer Chiquita that sent a tweet- “We’ve just overthrown the government of Brazil.”
That’s not all. The table’s turned on the Genius billionaire as well. An ‘unofficial official’ account of Tesla, Musk’s automotive company, tweeted, “BREAKING: A second Tesla has hit the World Trade Center,” and another account disguised as video game creator Nintendo tweeted a picture of Mario showing his middle finger.
Soon after these setbacks, Mr. Musk made a comeback and initially dismissed this model. But looking at it as a medium to generate business, the team finally decided that
You learn from mistakes and coincidentally so does the World’s richest man. We’re all not that different. We too take time to contemplate the decisions we’ve been making all along. It’s just that ours don’t hamper the international stock market; his does.
All we can say to end this is- It was maybe a great decision, but there’s a long way to go.
