While everyone seemed to regard the confirmation of the Twitter takeover as a formality, Elon Musk just announced the suspension of the operation. But what could put in pause deal of this magnitude?
Twitter has entered into a temporary agreement on hold pending details supporting the calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
As the billionaire points out son Twitter account, they talk about fake accounts and spam. In a Reuters article (which Musk shared on Twitter), on learns that fake accounts and spam accounted for less than 5% of daily active and monetized users during the first quarter of 2022. However, in the same quarter 229 millions users received ads on the network social. So inevitably a share of fake accounts and spam son value in a takeover transaction. Elon Musk, who is going to pay 44 billion dollars to buy the network social anyway, I want to know more. This is all the more important as the company announced before the takeover that removing fake accounts, spam and bots was one of its priorities. Therefore, he logically announced the suspension of the buyback operation, checking these figures. In an unequivocal tweet, Jane Manchun Wong, the programmer rocking Silicon Valley, was quick to point out that Twitter is full of fake accounts, spam, and bots in the name of… Elon Musk.
But those <5% are pretty targeted. They target accounts with big followers like you. This problem should still be fixed — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 13, 2022
Twitter shares are falling
Inevitably, such an announcement could not but provoke a reaction from investors. After the announcement was posted on Twitter, the company’s stock plummeted. At the time of this writing, it has already fallen by almost 18%. This episode echoes the comments of company representatives. Twitter did state that this file is subject to several risks prior to its final completion. First, find out if advertisers will continue to provide the same budget on Twitter when Elon Musk was in power. Further (and this risk is directly related to the first), Twitter did not hide the “potential uncertainty regarding (his) plans and (her) strategy future”. One thing is for sure: when Elon Musk is around, our surprises never end.
