Connect with us

Tech

Twitter Shares Jump 3% On Reports It could Accept Elon Musk’s Bid

Published

on

Twitter Shares Jump 3% On Reports It could Accept Elon Musk's Bid

Twitter shares jumped more than 3% on reports the company is nearing a deal with Elon Musk that could be announced as soon as Monday.

Musk earlier this month offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, or about $43 billion. The social media company had been expected to decline a deal and had adopted a so-called poison pill to fend off a potential hostile takeover. However, Twitter became more receptive to a bid after Musk revealed he secured $46.5 billion in financing.

The company’s board met Sunday to discuss Musk’s financing plan for his proposed bid, a source close to the situation told CNBC.

Bloomberg and Reuters reported the two sides could reach an agreement as soon as Monday. The board negotiated with Musk into the early hours of Monday, according to The New York Times.

It’s unclear what a final deal could look like, and Reuters reported Monday that an agreement could still fall apart. Twitter has not been able to secure a “go-shop” agreement yet, which would allow it to look for other bids once it signs an accord, according to Reuters. The company could still accept another bid if Musk pays a break-up fee, it added.

Wall Street was likely to view the news of Twitter’s openness to a bid “as the beginning of the end for Twitter as a public company with Musk likely now on a path to acquire the company unless a second bidder comes into the mix,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a Sunday note.

“I think they almost have to” take the deal, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday on “Squawk on the Street.” Twitter is set to report first-quarter earnings Thursday, and some, including Cramer, expect the company to post disappointing results.

“Locking a deal up today or tomorrow may sound pretty appealing for someone who knows they are in possession of bad news,” Gordon Haskett said in a Monday note.

READ ALSO: Elon Musk,World’s Richest Person, Says He Doesn’t Own A Home

Twitter declined to comment. Tesla shares were down more than 1% in the morning.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been on a tear to acquire Twitter. He had built up more than 9% in stock and turned down an offer to join the board before putting in a bid for the company.

Musk, an avid Twitter user, has contended it needs to be “transformed” into a private company so it can become a forum for free speech. He’s also said that Twitter’s board members’ interests “are simply not aligned with shareholders” and that the board “owns almost no shares” of the company.

 

Read more authentic news on our social media platforms

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Tech

I’ve Hired New Twitter CEO – Elon Musk

Published

on

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

Elon Musk said on Thursday he has found a new chief executive officer (CEO)  for Twitter, but did not name the person, while the Wall Street Journal reported that Comcast (CMCSA.O) NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino was in talks for the job.

Musk said in a tweet: “Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!”

Musk said he will transition to the role of chief technology officer of the social media platform within the next few weeks.

Musk, who took over as CEO of Twitter when he completed his $44 billion purchase of the company in October, said in December that he would step aside as CEO once he found “someone foolish enough to take the job.” He said that he would then run Twitter’s software and servers teams.

The WSJ cited people familiar with the situation in saying that Yaccarino was in talks for the top post.

Reuters reported after Musk’s tweet that Yaccarino could be his choice to lead Twitter, according to a Silicon Valley executive and a former Hollywood executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yaccarino, the top advertising sales executive at NBCUniversal, interviewed Musk at an advertising conference in Miami last month.

At the conference, Yaccarino encouraged the audience to welcome Musk with applause and lauded his work ethic.

“Many of you in this room know me, and you know I pride myself on my work ethic,” she said, adding, “Buddy, I met my match.”

Yaccarino joined NBCU in 2011, after 15 years at Turner Entertainment and has been credited with dragging the network’s ad sales operation into the digital future.

As broadcast television audiences migrated to streaming, she took to the stage at Radio City Music Hall last year to tell advertisers that their brand messages were not an afterthought.

Yaccarino did not respond to calls seeking comment on Thursday.

When asked for comment, an NBCUniversal spokesperson said, “Linda is in back-to-back rehearsals for the Upfront,” referring to a presentation NBCUniversal will host for advertisers in New York on Monday.

Yaccarino’s exit would be another big blow to the company after Comcast said last month that NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell was leaving after acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, following a complaint that prompted an investigation.

Musk has previously not named any prospective candidates.

Speculation was rife on Thursday among tech and media insiders and on Blind, an anonymous messaging app for tech employees.

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and a top executive at Musk’s brain-chip startup Neuralink, Shivon Zilis, were among names that were being discussed.

Musk, who has come under fire from investors in his Tesla (TSLA.O) electric car company as being distracted by his attention to Twitter, said he will transition to the role of Twitter’s executive chair, along with the role of CTO, overseeing product, software and system operations.

Musk’s post about a new Twitter CEO came about 15 minutes before the close of Wall Street on Thursday, and Tesla shares closed 2% higher. The shares rose a further 1.6% in after-hours trade.

“The boat anchor called Twitter is loosened from Musk’s ankle. Now he can get back to spending more time creating value at Tesla,” said Craig Irwin, analyst at Roth MKM.

Musk has long said he intended to find a new leader for Twitter.

In a Twitter poll started by Musk in December, 57.5% users voted for him to step down as CEO of the social media platform.

The billionaire’s first two weeks as Twitter’s owner in October were marked by rapid change. He quickly fired Twitter’s previous CEO, Parag Agrawal, and other senior leaders, and then laid off half its staff in November.

Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has said he took over Twitter to prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division.

He also said he would “defeat” spam bots on the platform, a key area of his tussle with Twitter’s board over his back and forth on the buyout of the company.

He said last month that Twitter was “roughly breaking even.”

. Reuter

Continue Reading

Tech

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

Published

on

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

 

Read more authentic news on our social media platforms

Continue Reading

Tech

WhatsApp To Get Additional Features For Better Interaction

Published

on

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.

 

Read more authentic news on our social media platforms

Continue Reading

Top Stories