Why? Because he could.
But there’s more to it than just wanting to shut up all the haters who questioned whether he was serious — or could do it.
The Oracle of Austin, well, he just loves, loves, loves to stir things up on Twitter. So much so that he struck a deal on Monday to buy the company for $44 billion. He’s using other people’s money for more than half of the purchase price because, you know, Musk is crazy, but he’s not stupid.
of @Tesla AND @SpaceX Boss is a professional Twitter user with more than 84 million followers and he wants to make Twitter “better”. Or maybe it just doesn’t absorb as much.
“Free speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where vital issues for the future of humanity are debated,” he said Monday in a statement. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by improving the product with new features, open-sourcing the algorithms to increase trust, defeating spam bots and authenticating all people.”
All good ideas. Imagine how great Twitter would be if there were no limits on what you could say!
But I dare Are you saying Musk is thinking too small? It is addressing the problem from a user’s perspective. An edit button (hey, Slack has it). Open source algorithms — great, either way.
What Twitter also needs is more users and bigger profits. Facebook, for all its problems, is much bigger. TikTok is much cooler. (Elon, just ask Grimes.)
Will the richest man in the world have time to fix Twitter users’ experience AND make it more profitable?
Of course not. Musk already has two full-time jobs: Troll on Twitter and #crypto evangelist/market manipulator. And there are plenty of side hustles, including, but not limited to, saving the planet from global warming, colonizing Mars, and boring big underground tunnels. . . the hell?
That’s why I’m available to serve as CEO of Twitter for Chairman Musk. I’d be his perfect #2 (not that I think he’s Dr. Evil).
If you check my LinkedIn profile, you’ll notice that I’ve never run a large corporation. Nor do I understand algorithms, advertising, or big data — all of which, apparently, are important to Twitter’s business model. I’m barely on Twitter – who do you need to know to get verified? — and most of my followers are porn bots.
But if Musk taps me for the job, I would focus on monetizing Twitter users in ways that should be obvious to the incoming former management. For example:
* No subscriptions; they are so pandemic (see: @Netflixstock price). Instead, I would eliminate the 280 character limit per tweet and charge a penny per character, with no cap on the length of a tweet. It will be $1 per character for all politicians and celebrities. Memes will cost extra, like hand luggage.
* Setting up premium tweets. I’m sure the twitter developers could create an automated auction system for users to buy their way to the top of user feeds, just like @Google does with his unbiased research. Twitter is leaving billions of dollars on the table — a fortune that could go toward Musk’s retirement plan or help him pay his mortgage.
* Higher rates for misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and incitement to overthrow the government. Free speech should not be free!
* Fees for retweets and likes. Twitter should be broken when a tweet goes viral.
* Pay for Amnesty™. This, I must admit, is a Grand Slam. I would allow banned users to buy their way back to Twitter. The fee will be a sliding scale based on the number of followers the individual had before launching, starting at $50 million. Cash or crypto only.
.@elonmusk I know you are a busy man. But just think: If I posted this column under my new business model, Twitter would have booked $44 in revenue — plus any retweet/like fees. Of course, not all tweets would be this long. But when you multiply that by 500 million tweets a day, we’re talking real money. For you too.
Larry Edelman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeNewsEd.
