Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle company in terms of market value, and SpaceX, which aims to establish life on Mars, is known for his eccentric character and event-creating tweets. Therefore, Musk’s desire to buy Twitter was perceived as madness at first.
However, in recent days, the needle has shifted to the perception that Musk is a visionary and successful businessman. Musk also quickly bought Twitter,
This perception, which enabled technology and finance journalists to express their opinions in this direction, must have also been formed by Twitter executives, as one of the most important acquisitions of the technology world took place.
So much so that journalist Liz Hoffman, who writes news about acquisitions, mergers and banks in the American The Wall Street Journal, says that she has never seen such an interesting acquisition on the technology front during her career.
Twitter; Compared to companies like Facebook and Google, it’s actually not a very big technology company in terms of market value.
However, it is an effective platform where people express their opinions in the public arena, share their jokes about current political issues, and follow the statements of the world’s most famous and important personalities.
‘My biggest regret’
Twitter has 217 million daily users.
This is a very low number when compared to the 1.9 billion daily active users of Facebook, which has similar functions.
But considering that politicians, journalists, artists and athletes use Twitter to make official statements, it’s still an important public space, at least for the news world.
For this reason, founder Jack Dorsey said in his latest tweets that Twitter is the closest thing to ‘global public awareness’ and that the platform is ‘his biggest concern and regret of being a company’.
According to Dorsey, there is no better solution than Musk in making Twitter a function that will work more for the public good.
Will robot accounts come to an end?
When we come to Musk’s vision for Twitter, the first thing he promised to do is the fight against bot accounts, which affect Turkey as well as most countries.
In Turkey, where there are 16 million Twitter users, tag campaigns organized by accounts called “trolls” on political issues are often at the center of discussions.
Musk is in favor of developing an algorithm that will put an end to bot accounts on Twitter and only have real people on the platform.
Defining himself as a “very strict defender of freedom of expression”, Musk has listed the following about the changes he is considering to make with Twitter: Twitter’s algorithm will be turned into open source, it will be a town square where everyone can freely defend their opinion under the law, fraud campaigns on the platform will end.
It is still a mystery how these will be realized or what steps will be taken apart from these.
‘A different atmosphere than in 2020’
Those working at Twitter also have little idea how these changes will materialize.
According to the news of the American New York Times newspaper, 7 thousand employees of the company; It does not yet know what will happen to its employment rights, shares in the company, and company policies and culture.
Noting that there are also some employees who are excited that Musk will take over the company, the newspaper states that the atmosphere is generally the opposite of what it was in 2020.
Twitter employees responded enthusiastically to Musk’s arrival at a company event in 2020, and in his speech at that time, Musk stated that the company needed to get rid of bot accounts by increasing moderation.
Jack Dorsey, who hosted the event, said, “Would you like to manage Twitter?” Employees laughed and Musk answered the question by being silent.
Those who responded to Musk’s arrival with excitement and protest
How to deal with racist, sexist, discriminatory comments and accounts and how to provide moderation is a big problem not only for Twitter, but for all social media and technology companies.
With the arrival of Musk, it is not yet known whether this problem on Twitter will be solved with algorithms or more human-made moderation.
The recent scandals regarding the privacy of personal data and mental health regarding Facebook, the psychologically challenging aspects of social media accounts, have caused a technology fatigue in people in general.
That’s why Musk’s arrival on Twitter as a boss has been met with polarization, as in every other issue on social media these days: Some have greeted this development with excitement as Twitter’s salvation, while others have already closed their accounts and protested.
However, it is also a fact that perhaps Twitter needs such a crossroads.
It is a problem that the company has not been able to increase its revenues and increase the number of users for a long time.
Twitter, a publicly traded company that survives on advertising revenues, has never been able to realize a business model that will ensure the flow of money.
The competition with other technology companies in terms of advertising revenues has always progressed to its disadvantage due to the low number of users.
Although subscription systems where content producers will make money have been developed recently, the results of this system have not yet been seen on the income side.
Musk’s vision for Twitter
“Why does Twitter need to be a platform that appeals to large audiences like Facebook and Instagram?” The question is also reasonable, but the fact that neither content creators nor Twitter itself can make money from the platform has caused it to become a place where technology writers roll their eyes for a long time and users sometimes get bored.
The fact that Musk, as the richest person in the world, bought a social media platform is actually a problem in itself in terms of freedom of expression.
However, aside from the scandals in Musk’s companies, his tweets that make fun of people, and his incomprehensible explanations, it cannot be ignored that he founded Tesla with his passion for sustainable environment and renewable energy.
“I believe that in the long run, renewable energy will be the cheapest form of energy, but it doesn’t happen overnight,” says Musk, who aims to fight climate change with Tesla.
Musk, who turned the auto industry upside down after going through a process full of blood, sweat and tears to keep Tesla afloat, said in an interview, “For a very long time, the auto industry looked at Tesla and me as either idiots or crooks. They told me that it would not work, that it would not be able to provide this distance and performance. Even if you could do it, no one would buy it,” he said.
It is possible to understand from Musk’s statements that he loves Twitter as much as he believes that an environmentalist transformation will take place in the field of energy.
Time will tell whether he will transform Twitter into an innovative platform with his vision of freedom of expression or make it even more divisive and polarizing like the people who criticize him.
And that’s very likely going to be a crossroads for Twitter, whether it’s on track or fading out.