TWITTER: What Elon Musk's Acquisition Means for the Future of Social Media
On January 31st, Elon Musk, already the CEO of four companies, started buying shares in a fifth. Twitter.?
Within two months, the world’s richest man snapped up more than 5 percent of the social media platform. Emboldened perhaps by his growing ownership stake, he began voicing his concerns about Twitter on — where else? — Twitter.
On March 24th, he tweeted:
The next day, he queried his followers:
And the day after that, he wondered aloud:
On April 14th, he came up with a surprising answer to that question: The world didn’t need a new platform; Twitter needed a new owner.
The news, earlier this week, that Twitter accepted Musk’s $44 billion offer, has got the chattering class into a tizzy.?
For all his fame and success, Musk is still something of an enigmatic character — and a polarizing one. As we discussed with Harvard historian Jill Lepore back in February, his public persona?— and perhaps his private one — has melded over time with that of Tony Stark, Iron Man. Impossibly wealthy and brilliant and innovative … and more than a little bit mischievous.
Nowhere has Musk's rash, impish nature been on better display than on Twitter, where he has more than 85 million followers and has tweeted more than 17,000 times.
Now, Twitter is not an especially popular platform, as far as social media goes. Its 217 million monthly users may seem like a lot, but to put it in perspective, Instagram has 2 billion. Even Pinterest has twice the users that Twitter does.
But despite its relatively small fanbase, Twitter has become an ever more newsworthy platform in recent years. That’s largely thanks to the way it functioned as a kind of weaponized bully pulpit for Donald Trump. The decision to ban Trump from Twitter was astonishingly effective, in hindsight – he wasn’t much for press briefings, so the Twitter ban effectively muzzled him. A sitting president.
Anyway, it’s no surprise that the acquisition of one of our most important platforms for social discourse by the contrarian, superhero-inspired richest man in the world, has captivated the attention of everyone who’s in media … and everyone who’s interested in media.?
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Yet another layer of intrigue is Musk’s own controversial history on Twitter. He once posted a photo of Bill Gates with the caption “in case [you] need to lose a boner fast.” He compared Justin Trudeau to Hitler. He called the coronavirus panic quote “dumb.” And, oh, he used Twitter to commit securities fraud. No wonder he wants to introduce an edit button! Add all that to the picture, and of course no one is going to be able to stop talking about this deal — some expressing grave concern, some cautious optimism, and others sheer dumbfoundedness.
In light of this frothy public conversation, we decided to do something different this week. We are interrupting our regularly scheduled programming to bring you special coverage of this tantalizing story … and we are inviting not one guest – but two!
Give it a listen below, on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify … and then let’s discuss in the comments below!
The first of our two? guests is someone regular listeners have heard from before – my old friend Steven Johnson. Steven sprung to mind immediately because he has been writing about emerging networks and the impact of technology on society for 25 years. He has published more than a dozen books, including Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create & Communicate; Everything Bad is Good for You, about the sometimes positive impact of video games and media on cognition; and How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World.?
Our other guest, Eli Pariser, got his start as the executive director of Moveon.org at the tender age of 24. He went on to co-found Upworthy, a website for meaningful viral content, and to write the bestselling book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You. His latest jam, as he calls it, is an organization called New Public, which is working with designers and technologists to reimagine the internet as a public space.
Those of you who listened to my conversation with Jill Lepore will know that though I am sympathetic to criticism of Elon Musk — the guy can be reckless and puerile and a menace, in his worst moments — I fundamentally like him. I can’t help it. I am inspired by the youthful idealism that drives him … or seems to.??
I really do think he’s hell bent on accelerating our path to energy sustainability. And it’s reasonable to argue that he has done more than any other individual on the planet to make it happen. My two cents? He actually wants to make Twitter better, too, though I will allow that his definition of a “better Twitter” may be motivated by self-interest.?
I make an effort to counter my Musk sympathies by soliciting the opinions of friends who disagree, which you'll hear in the conversation that follows.
We also get into some broader questions, which I would argue are more important than who owns Twitter. Should anyone own the town square? Should your identity — currently hosted on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — be the property of a private company? Who should control the social graph, the web of connections linking you with the people and things you engage with online? And how can we build better platforms that support our needs as individuals and foster the kinds of healthy debate necessary for a vigorous democracy??
Episode Notes
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