Let me explain why Elon Musk acquiring Twitter is the beginning of the end for Twitter.
When I head to parties, I am usually not comfortable. I am forced into going by peer pressure and just count the moments till I am out of there. I hope you are never in my position. You could be the exact opposite—the party socializing beast.
Now imagine a party when everyone are party socializing beasts. Then there‘s me. Sitting there when nobody wants me to be there. I am just ruining their plans.
If you can‘t see where I am going with this, let me make your life easier. I am Twitter. I was just acquired by a person who‘s criticizing my core essence. You might think of him as my hero.
There‘s just a tiny detail—We are in the ruthless business world.
We are not in a movie. Hence, there is no such thing as a hero. I am a number to Elon. If I do not improve, I am useless.
Alright, let‘s skip the metaphoric conversation and jump into real talk. Twitter‘s acquisition is final, in case you were living under a rock. Elon Musk owns Twitter. He also spread his dominance by firing the board of directors and the upper management team.
One could say these are smart moves of someone trying to enhance Twitter as a company. However, acquisitions are almost never like this. If you are an investor acquiring or investing in a company, then you want the company to operate as while implementing some of your strategies.
If not, you wouldn‘t buy it. Truth is, Elon is doing this out of frustration and anger. If you were following up to his twitter case, you would predict that he was forced into buying Twitter. If I had to bet, I would say the same. He was forced into buying Twitter after changing his mind.
Then his rage reading a couple of messages from the board peaked. He has zero belief in Twitter at its current stage. He probably thought of it as a good investment since he‘s an avid user of the platform and started to get popularity on it. Elon has always been a showman who likes attention. Hence, it makes sense.
However, is Twitter a good investment for Elon Musk?
By no means is Twitter a good investment for the world‘s richest person. At least, not to the acquisition level. He, out of all people, could‘ve seen the number of bots on the platform if he‘d check the responses to his tweets. The monetization strategy and twitter ads are utter disasters. It‘s the myspace that survived.
Of course, Twitter has its user base. But it‘s not by any means competing with the giants like Insta and TikTok. Truth is, it never will. Twitter is based on short texts. It‘s similar to a microphone at a party. If someone speaks using it, people would applaud. But if not, the party goes on.
Is this a path to X, the everything app?
The moment we all knew Elon has lost a strong case, he tweeted that buying Twitter is a smart approach to building X, his dream app. There‘s only one problem. Twitter is not an “everything app“ whatsoever. Twitter is twitter and always will be. We tweet to share news or updates. By “we“, I mean the minority who are actually active there compared to instagram for instance.
Reading some Reuters articles, you can see that some reports are saying Twitter has around 250 million daily active users. Instagram has double that. TikTok has 700 million daily active users in China alone.
The imaginary app, X, Elon Musk is pitching will most certainly have more functionalities than Twitter. Additionally, there‘s a core fault in linking the two apps together—branding.
Twitter will always be the app that has 280 characters. It‘s good this way. Change it to instagram and it will fail. Change it to TikTok, and it will fail. Could such a limited app transform into a power app? highly doubtful. It could‘ve been wiser to build X from scratch. My guess would be that he already thought of this while trying to back away from the acquisition deal.
Oh, and he won‘t have time to do so.
Whether you believe he is an Alien or not, Elon Musk is a human being. He is now creating legendary products on Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink. Yet, his attention is not in place. I‘ve written an article once about how Ford will outperform Tesla in the future. I was swarmed by comments from people loving Tesla, which was expected. However, the number of people criticizing Tesla‘s product was noticeable, which surprised me a bit.
Elon Musk is an amazing engineer, as he calls himself. He needs to maintain focus in order to actually build companies with value in future industries. Twitter, unfortunately, does not need an engineer. Twitter needs a business man to understand the market and the social media behavior of the upcoming generation.
Elon is not a business man, unfortunately. Hence, this is a ticking time bomb.
What will happen?
Conjecture has never been part of my articles. Yet, I‘d like to place a guess. If I am right, then awesome. If I am wrong, then the richest and most influential person in the world proved me wrong, which is not shocking.
Elon Musk will sell enhance Twitter then sell it, or merge it with another company.
Then he‘ll consider the $44 billion he paid to be $167 for each of those 250 million daily active users. Call it a marketing push.
Whatever happens, today is the day you should say good bye to the Twitter you know. It‘ll either shift significantly or die slowly.
Elon Musk forced on Twitter will be one of the most interesting events in the upcoming five years. However, at the end of the day, it won‘t make that difference in his entrepreneurial journey. He is still creating products that are changing the world, and will keep doing so.
It‘s just business to Elon Musk, even if Twitter goes to ashes.
These moments let you appreciate Zuck and his crazy stubbornness with the metaverse which will most likely destroy Meta. However, there is no question that he loves Facebook and will do his best to ensure the product remains on top. Unfortunately, Twitter does not have a Zuck.
Its founder, Jack Dorsey, is creating Bluesky social, a twitter alternative. If the blue bird had eyes, it would be crying. Nevertheless, we are in the business world where products vanish instantly for feuds and irrational reasons.
Twitter has given us wonderful business stories. Hopefully, the last ride will be an enjoyable one as well.
Meet The Author Of This Article
I’m Al Anany, the founder and CEO of Albusi.
Writing in the business industry has shifted my mentality toward entrepreneurship. I started on Medium in 2021 and ended up being a Top Writer of more than 4 categories and had my content viewed more than 213k times.
I always have a single goal while writing: focus on entertaining while adding value.
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