[Introduction to Xin Zhiyuan] Academician Musk, the richest man in the world, has now made a dramatic decision. Within two days, not only did the board of directors stop going, but even claimed to change the Twitter headquarters into a homeless shelter.

Editor: Editorial Department

[ New Zhiyuan Introduction] Academician Musk, who is full of drama, has now made a very dramatic decision. In the situation where he was still bound after becoming the major shareholder of Twitter , he said he would simply buy the entire Twitter.

Last week, Musk just became the largest shareholder of Twitter.

After two days, not only did the board of directors stop going, but they even claimed to change the Twitter headquarters into a homeless shelter.

Now, Musk announced again: I want to buy all Twitter! Not for making money, it is for the future of human civilization!

Wait a few days ago, why did you suddenly become a "buy company"?

Twitter "Poll": I bought out Twitter, okay?

Although Musk has won 9.2% of Twitter's stock, this is just the first step.

However, after learning the news, the board of directors immediately limited his shareholding ratio to less than 15%.

and told him privately: If you become a shareholder, you cannot criticize him, otherwise it will violate the regulations of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (SEC). This wave of operation of

is obviously far from Musk's goal of "dramatic" transformation of Twitter.

Since I can’t handle the board of directors, I might as well buy the entire company directly!

But before that, Musk decided to initiate a vote to see what everyone thought: "Privatizing Twitter at a price of $54.20 should be decided by shareholders, not by the board of directors." After

4 seconds, someone voted the first vote.

In less than half a day, the number of voters reached nearly 2 million, and the number of people who agreed was more than 80%.

It seems that Academician Ma is still very popular on Twitter.

However, there are probably few real shareholders here. But adhering to the principle of "watching the fun is not a big deal", you can vote for "Yes" first.

I have to say that in order to be able to write randomly on a social networking website every day, the richest man in the world spent a huge sum of money to buy the website.

is really a domineering president who came out of Guanshui.

Some people say that Musk has been showing off recently and has a lot of opinions on the domestic situation in the United States. This is to pave the way for himself to elect a president in the future.

However, this is a more nonsensical guess than Musk's own words: According to Article 5 of Chapter 2, Paragraph 1, Article 5 of the US Constitution, only citizens born in the "natural birthplace" in the United States are eligible to be president.

Born in Austria Schwarzenegger After becoming the governor of California in the 2000s, he tried hard to revise this failure in the constitution, causing the "terminator" to miss the White House position.

"Terminator" can't handle things, and "Iron Man" born in South Africa can't handle things.

Musk: I bought Twitter to give you freedom

As for why I wanted to acquire Twitter, only Musk himself may know the true thoughts.

For the outside world, the reasons for guessing are just a few, such as the right to speak.

However, since you are going to acquire it, you have to be famous.

And the reason Musk arranged for himself seems to make sense - it is very important on a stage that tolerate all kinds of remarks.

After all, Musk himself has always been outspoken in criticizing Twitter, especially in stifling freedom of speech. (For example, the disappearing Chuanbao?)

In the filings submitted to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk said he believes Twitter has the potential to become a global free speech platform.

In fact, Twitter has become a "city square", so it is very important for people to understand reality and to know that they can speak freely within the scope permitted by law.

My strong intuition tells me that having a most trusted, widely inclusive public platform is extremely important to the future of civilization.

In addition, a letter he sent to the Twitter board was also attached to the file:

I invest in Twitter because I believe that Twitter has the potential to become a global free speech platform. However, I realized that Twitter could not succeed under the existing system, so I wanted to acquire Twitter at 54.2 yuan per share. This is the best and final bid. If I disagree, I will consider selling my stock.

Now many people on Twitter say that if Musk buys Twitter, they will back it.

Others laughed at me: Come on, you were also howling in 2016, saying that Trump Being the president, you will go into exile in Canada. How many of them really ran away?

At present, Musk has not made any master plan for his Twitter vision, but he said he will make "significant improvements" to the platform.

On Thursday, Musk talked about some measures he would implement to change Twitter in an interview with Vancouver in an interview with TED.

He said, "My first task is to eliminate the army of spam, spam bots and zombies on Twitter."

Musk also proposed other ways to improve the Twitter user experience, including opening the source code of the Twitter algorithm to make the platform more transparent.

"If people's tweets change, whether they are emphasized or not, these operations should be transparent. Therefore, no matter whether they are used by algorithms or manual operations, they should be manipulated behind the scenes."

In addition, Musk's recent tweets indicated that he would use his influence on the company, oppose content censorship policies, and efforts to clear users who violate Twitter guidelines.

Previously, when Musk announced that he had acquired 9% of Twitter's shares, he said that he would add editing functions to Twitter and allow subscribers to pay with "Dogcoin".

Twitter counterattack: Poison pill plan

Facing the aggressive Musk, Twitter obviously is not a vegetarian.

"Poison Pill Plan" came into being.

Change to a name that is not that second-class. The so-called poison pill plan is the "Stock Equity Plan".

In a word, some buyers are not good at coming, so the price they buy must be expensive and the steps must be cumbersome. Musk is a malicious buyer. The name

cannot be too popular.

In the past, once a spy was caught, what awaited him was endless torture and interrogation. No one wanted to be tortured, so the spy thought of a solution. I will prepare a "poison pill" first, and I will take it if you catch me. Don't even ask, I'll die. The same is true for putting

in a commercial situation.

What should I do if Twitter doesn’t want to be acquired by Musk? I will take a "poison pill" first, and it will not be that easy for you to buy my stock. Poison pills can make buying shares expensive and troublesome.

Musk looked at it and it was so expensive that it would be hard to eat it in his mouth? Well, I just don't want it.

The specific mechanism is as follows:

Twitter will allow existing shareholders to purchase additional company shares at a discounted price, which can effectively dilute the rights and interests of a newly entered and malicious acquirer.

htmlOn the morning of April 14, Musk took the initiative to offer a share of US$54.20 and acquired Twitter, with a total transaction amount of US$43 billion. And said it would privatize Twitter to unlock all its potential.

Just after he announced the acquisition plan, Twitter's "leadership team" urgently convened a board meeting to implement the poison pill plan.

In response to this, Musk hinted after TED speech that he is likely to make " hostile acquisition of ".

That is to say, he will bypass Twitter’s board of directors and directly make an offer to his shareholders.

However, the board of directors does not support it, so does the shareholders support it?

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of , Saudi Arabia, made a very clear rejection: "As one of Twitter's largest long-term shareholders, I think Musk's offer seriously underestimates the value of the company."

Even so, it doesn't mean that Musk is "the target of public criticism."

For example, Twitter chairman Bret Taylor is very supportive of Musk's joining the board of directors. He said Musk's criticism of Twitter was very reasonable.

Obviously, the cost barrier may not mean as much as I imagined.

After all, what he said in the TED interview where he announced his intention was: Buying Twitter is not for making money, I am for the future of human civilization.

This kind of "I have money, and I want to do something big" is actually the personal temperament of the richest man in the world, not from literary works. Sometimes reality is really impossible to write.

I still have Plan B

If Musk's plan to privatize Twitter is rejected by the company's board of directors, he also has a backup plan Plan B.

Musk said that the bid of $54.20 per share was his best bid and the last bid.

As for what Plan B is, Musk did not disclose it.

This is really a bit strong acquisition. A can't do it, but B may have C... It's exactly the same as the plot of his strong takeover of Tesla back then.

No matter what, Musk's forced buying Twitter this time will not be as easy as stealing Tesla. What else can I buy

43 billion US dollars?

This amazing move shocked not only the ordinary public, but also the Chinese media editors, but also the American media editors also had a lot of thoughts: The more than 43 billion US dollars Elon Musk will cost, what else can I buy?

Result Verge editorial department found after a brain storm: Actually, there is nothing that can’t be bought, it’s really literal.

The following is an incomplete list:

Send people to the moon

Musk has said several times since 2017 that he wants to send people to the moon. When NASA proposed the U.S. moon landing plan in 2019, the government audit department believed that the entire project would cost $93 billion. NASA's supervisor said that according to their usual morality, the budget generally had to be additional $20-30 billion.

However, Musk's SpaceX company is now making great progress in low-cost and recyclable rocket projects. The more than 43 billion US dollars bought from Twitter were invested on SpaceX, and it is not impossible to let Musk's astronauts go to the moon.

After all, NASA's bid for SpaceX to purchase " Starship " as a lunar vehicle was only US$2.9 billion.

Save the world's hungry

Maybe many people don't remember that from October to November 2021, United Nations " World Food Programme " (WFP) and Musk were still on Twitter.

At that time, WFP's estimate was that US$6.6 billion could save 42 million human hungry people from starving to death. The achievement of more than US$43 billion is naturally far higher than 6.6 billion.

The final result of this matter was that in November 2021 Musk claimed to donate $5.7 billion to WFP, but in February 2022 WFP said that he did not see the money coming...

Renovation of all disrepaired bridges in the United States

In 2021, the national road and bridge status report given by relevant industry associations in the United States stated that one of every three bridges in the United States urgently needs repair and maintenance. How much does it cost to renovate all the roads and bridges that are urgently needed in the country? $42 billion.

In other words, Musk used his budget to buy Twitter to build old roads and bridges across the United States, and in the end he could still find more than 1 billion US dollars.

Hire a Tesla PR team that actually exists

Tesla's PR team is actually the only big boss who loves to be a troll on Twitter. This is well-known to everyone. Other major companies in the automotive industry basically have at least dozens to hundreds of professional public relations employees to do this business.

Public relations is also a professional technology. Hiring some professionals to do this work is much better than Musk's own personal charm or virility on Twitter. And there is no need to have a budget of more than 43 billion US dollars, just give it a fraction.

spent more than 160 million US dollars, why?

Even in this (more) serious business decision to spend a lot of money to buy Twitter, Musk, the world's number one online meme and richest man, still did not forget to play meme: the Twitter price given is $54.20 per share, which actually contains a prank.

Since the 1970s, "420" has been a popular idiom that describes rebellious youth in the United States. This number appears in the astronomical purchase of Twitter quotation, which makes many people suspect that this is Musk's performance art again.

Musk himself had a history of playing the "420" meme many times before. On April 10, 2022, he tweeted: "69.420% of the statistics are fake."

This is a pun that needs to be explained: Musk himself has both a small hobby of flying couples, and was born on June 28, 1971 - just 69 days after April 20 that year.

This birthday is really a life of unrestrained love for "freedom"...

In 2018, Musk announced that he would sell Tesla stocks at a price of $420, and even formed one of the key points of his conflict with the SEC that year.

As for the attitude this time, some people think that this number meme shows that Musk is serious about buying Twitter: "Add two cents, just to tell a 420 joke. This means that for the sake of being funny, Musk will spend more than 160 million US dollars. This total amount is enough to show that he is determined to win this move."

Some people also think that the same number meme means that Musk is joking again: "Just just to make a quick talk, and to draw up a quotation number casually. This is obviously not a serious business decision worthy of headlines and attention."

It can only be seen in the follow-up. Anyway, everyone knows now that Musk can do everything.

Of course, the richest man in the world is rich and foolish, but for ordinary people, no matter how hard or lost, they must reject these things.

Finally, I have to sigh: US$160 million is a fraction of what Musk can throw away and disdain to pick up.

Some huge amounts are, on the head of ordinary people, and on the head of the richest man in humanity, it is a piece of dust.

Looking at today's Xiao Xiaotian, I can't help but think that an old joke is really reasonable:

Money cannot buy everything, but it can buy you.

Reference:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-timeline-stock-purchase-board-seat-drama-2022-4

https://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-explains-what-he-wants-to-chan ge-about-twitter/

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/twitter-board-expected-to-fight-musk-offer?rc=epv9gi

https://deadline.com/2022/04/elon-musk-offers-41-4bn-to-buy-twitter-1235002295/