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Elon Musk Offers to Proceed With Twitter Deal At Original Price

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Elon Musk Looks For Twitter CEO 'Foolish Enough' To Succeed Him

Elon Musk on Tuesday offered to push through with his buyout of Twitter at the original agreed price, as a trial over his efforts to withdraw from the deal loomed.

The world’s richest man said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that he sent Twitter a letter vowing to honor the contract.

The latest twist in the long-running saga came ahead of the high-stakes court battle launched by Twitter in an attempt to hold the Tesla chief to the deal he signed in April.

Musk’s potential stewardship of the influential social media site has sparked worry from activists who fear he could open the gates to more abusive and misinformative posts.

“We write to notify you that the Musk Parties intend to proceed to closing of the transaction,” read a copy of the letter to Twitter filed with the SEC.

Twitter confirmed to AFP that it received the letter from Musk, and said it intends to close the buyout deal at the agreed-on price of $54.20 per share.

Conditions noted in Musk’s letter included that the court halt action in the lawsuit against him. He had been slated to be questioned under oath by Twitter attorneys later this week.

The 51-year-old tweeted that buying Twitter “is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” offering no details.

During an annual shareholders meeting in August, Musk said Twitter could add momentum to a vision he had for the X.com company he founded in 1999.

X.com merged with Confinity, whose co-founders include Peter Thiel, and the entity went on to become PayPal.

“I do sort of have a grander vision for what I thought X.com, or X corporation, could have been back in the day,” Musk said at the shareholder meeting.

“I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years.”

Buyer’s remorse?
A serial entrepreneur made rich through his success with Tesla electric cars, Musk began to step back from the Twitter deal soon after it was agreed.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk Places Twitter Deal On Hold

But “I think that Musk realized he was not going to win that trial” next week, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told AFP.

“Ever since he had buyer’s remorse, the problem has been why, and why had he not done due diligence up front.”

‌Musk said in July he was canceling the purchase because he was misled by Twitter concerning the number of fake “bot” accounts, allegations rejected by the company.

Twitter meanwhile has sought to prove Musk was contriving excuses to walk away because he changed his mind.

In July, a Delaware judge agreed to fast-track a trial on Twitter’s allegations.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in an email that Musk’s pivot showed he recognized “this $44 billion deal was going to be completed one way or another.”

Musk made his unsolicited bid to buy Twitter without asking for estimates regarding spam or fake accounts, and even sweetened his offer to the board by withdrawing a diligence condition, the lawsuit said.

“Ultimately, we will not know why Elon elected to change course ahead of trial, though we speculate that there are details of the negotiation or legal process that he preferred remain private — including deposition,” Baird Equity Research analysts said in a note to investors.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk Considers Buying Coca Cola To Remake With Cocaine

Seen by his champions as an iconoclastic genius and by his critics as an erratic megalomaniac, Musk surprised many investors with his pursuit of Twitter.

Claiming to be a free speech advocate, he has said he favored lifting the site’s ban on Donald Trump, who was kicked off shortly after the former president’s efforts to overturn his election defeat led to the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol by his supporters.

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Elon Musk Looks For Twitter CEO ‘Foolish Enough’ To Succeed Him

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Elon Musk Looks For Twitter CEO 'Foolish Enough' To Succeed Him

Elon Musk said late Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job.

Musk’s announcement came after just over 57 per cent of responses indicated that he should step down from the role, in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by the past weekend.

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”

Since taking over San Francisco-based Twitter in late October, Musk’s run as CEO has been marked by quickly issued rules and policies that have often been withdrawn or changed soon after being made public.

Twitter users vote yes to Elon Musk’s poll of whether he should step down as CEO

He has also alienated some investors in his electric vehicle company Tesla who are concerned that Twitter is taking too much of his attention.

“The first weeks of Mr. Musk’s Twitter ownership have raised questions about possible violations of securities or other laws, including whether Mr. Musk is funnelling Tesla resources into Twitter,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a letter, made public, to Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s board chair.

READ  ALSO: Mass Sacking As Elon Musk Completes Takeover Of Twitter

Tumultuous first weeks Some of Musk’s actions have unnerved Twitter advertisers and turned off users. They include laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, letting go contract content moderators and disbanding a council of trust and safety advisors that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.

Musk, who also helms the SpaceX rocket company, has previously acknowledged how difficult it will be to find someone to take over as Twitter CEO.

On Sunday, Twitter owner Elon Musk joined comedian Dave Chappelle on stage and was roundly booed. Musk responded on Twitter saying, “Technically, it was 90% cheers,” and that “It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.”

Musk has said that he’s politically a centrist, but the tweet is just one recent example of how he’s adopted partisan language in a social media culture war. Musk has distributed Twitter records that are supposed to reveal biased censorship, indulged in far-right talking points about COVID-19 and unbanned white nationalist accounts.

Bantering with Twitter followers last Sunday, he said that the person replacing him “must like pain a lot” to run a company that he said has been “in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted.

As things stand, Musk would still retain overwhelming influence over platform as its owner. He fired the company’s board of directors soon after taking control.

.CBC

 

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WhatsApp To Get Additional Features For Better Interaction

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WhatsApp To Gets Additional Features For Better Interaction

By John Michael Ojo
WhatsApp users will henceforth get more value for their money from the Meta-owned messaging platform following the launch of new features, including expansion  of size of group video calls to accommodate 32 people, increasing the group size to 1024 from 512 and allowing users to carry out polls in group chats.

The announcement of the new features was made known on Thursday by  Mark Zuckerberg.

“Today, we are excited to share our vision for a new feature we are adding to WhatsApp called Communities. Since WhatsApp launched in 2009, we’ve been focused on how we can help people have the next best thing to an in-person conversation when they want to talk to an individual or a group of friends or family,” Mr Zuckerberg said.

He added, “We also frequently hear from people who are using WhatsApp to communicate and coordinate within a community.”

The communities feature changes in admin controls, and introduces support for sub-groups and announcement groups. The feature will also allow 32-person voice and video calls, larger file sharing, emoji reactions, and polls.

READ ALSO: Users Stranded As WhatsApp Goes Down

When the feature is launched, admins of existing group chats will be able to transition their group to ‘Communities’ or opt to re-create their group as a ‘Community’.

Mr Zuckerberg noted that the encryption aspects of the ‘Communities’ feature was to “raise the bar for how organisations communicate with a level of privacy and security not found anywhere else.”

The ‘Communities’ feature has been in testing with over 50 organisations in 15 countries to gain early feedback.

 

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BREAKING: Mass Sacking As Elon Musk Completes Takeover Of Twitter

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Elon Musk Looks For Twitter CEO 'Foolish Enough' To Succeed Him

The $44 billion (£38.1 billion) Twitter deal begun by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has been completed with his takeover of the company.

This was disclosed by an investor in the firm who tweeted “the bird is freed”, in an apparent reference to the deal closing.

A number of top executives, including the boss, Parag Agrawal, have reportedly been fired.

It brings to a close a saga that saw Twitter go to court to hold the multi-billionaire to the terms of a takeover deal that he had tried to escape.

Twitter has not yet confirmed the takeover, but an early investor in the company told the BBC that the deal had been completed.

Mr Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist”, has been critical of Twitter’s moderation policies and the news will be greeted with mixed feelings by Twitter users and employees.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk Offers to Proceed With Twitter Deal At Original Price

Many people on the right of US politics will celebrate the exit of Agrawal as chief executive. They view people like Agrawal, and his predecessor, Jack Dorsey, as liberals who are curtailing free speech.

They also think that under their stewardship, Twitter has censored conservative voices – an accusation that Twitter denied.

Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and the firm’s top legal and policy executive, Vijaya Gadde, are no longer with the company, according to US media reports.

Agrawal and Segal were escorted out of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters after the deal closed, the Reuters news agency reported.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone thanked Agrawal, Segal and Gadde for their “collective contribution” to the business.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk Considers Buying Coca Cola To Remake With Cocaine

Meanwhile, Bret Taylor – who had served as Twitter’s chairman since last November – updated his LinkedIn profile to indicate that he was no longer in the post.

 

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