Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing time on the morning of October 28, according to reports, people familiar with the matter revealed that Elon Musk (Elon Musk) has completed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter (Twitter). After six months of repetition, the world's richest man finally took control of the troubled social network.

Musk offered $54.20 a share to buy shares in the company from Twitter shareholders, turning Twitter from a public company into a private company. The completion of the deal put an end to this intricate event. It began in January, when the billionaire quietly bought a lot of Twitter shares. Because he was dissatisfied with the company's mode of operation, he reached an acquisition agreement with it. But he then spent months trying to terminate the deal.

On October 4, Musk agreed to buy Twitter in accordance with the initial offer, while a judge of the Delaware Court of Equity set the two sides to complete the deal by October 28 at the latest. Now that the deadline has come, Musk, who is CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, will take over Twitter. Although Musk often uses Twitter, he also publicly criticizes it, promising to make major changes to the platform. Twitter shares will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after the acquisition.

Mr Musk embarked on a management shake-up as soon as he took over, leaving Twitter CEO Palag Agravar (Parag Agrawal); Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, policy and trust; CFO Ned Segal, who joined Twitter in 2017; and Sean Edgett, who has been general counsel since 2012. It is reported that Edgate was escorted out of the office building.

When Musk takes control of Twitter, the company's operations will be hit immediately, in part because of the contradiction between his business philosophy and the way Twitter has been run for years. He has said he wants to ensure "freedom of expression" on Twitter, which means it is possible to relax censorship standards. He also plans to restore some celebrity accounts that have been blocked for violations, including former US President Donald Trump (Donald Trump). Overall, Musk's measures could derail years of Twitter's efforts to reduce online violence and rumors.

As the deadline approached, Musk had begun to put his mark on Twitter. He posted a video of himself walking into Twitter headquarters and changed his Twitter profile to "chief Twitter". According to people familiar with the matter, he arranged for engineer Tesla to meet with the head of Twitter products and planned to speak to employees on Friday. As of noon on Thursday, Twitter engineers could no longer modify the platform's code to ensure that the product would not change until the deal was completed.

Twitter employees have been shrouded in layoffs since the deal was announced in April. Mr Musk proposed cost-cutting ideas to partner banks when he was financing the deal. Some potential investors have learned that Mr Musk is preparing to lay off 75 per cent of its Twitter staff (the company currently has about 7500 employees) and is expected to double its revenue in the next three years.

But Mr Musk told employees during a visit to Twitter's headquarters on Wednesday that he had no plans to cut 75 per cent of staff after the acquisition was completed, according to people familiar with the matter.

Keep healthy Musk told a staff meeting in June that Twitter "needs to stay healthy", hinting at cutting costs. He also said that only "excellent" employees could work from home, while others had to come to the office to work. Twitter is one of the first big companies to promise that all employees can telecommute "permanently".

Twitter has also taken some measures according to Musk's wishes. The company announced a hiring freeze in May, closed or scaled back several branches around the world, and cancelled a full-staff Disney vacation in 2023.

In order to ensure the smooth completion of the deal, Twitter also froze employees' equity incentive accounts last week. People familiar with the matter said this raised concerns among employees that they might not be able to get their equity rewards smoothly. And employees begin to discuss and study labor laws to make sure they get legal severance pay.

It is widely believed that Agrawal will not continue to serve as Twitter CEO after Musk's acquisition. Text messages disclosed during the lawsuit showed that the two had an argument at the beginning of the acquisition, and Mr Musk later mocked Mr Agrawal for being on vacation in Hawaii at the beginning of the negotiations. Jack Dorsey, a former Twitter CEO, tried to reconcile them, but failed.

"at least everyone knows that you two don't get along." Dorsey texted Musk on April 26, saying, "that's clear."

At the same time, Gad's Twitter content policy department has also been heavily criticized by Musk.

Twitter generates revenue mainly from ads placed in user streams, but the company's business has been in trouble since Musk announced its acquisition plans. Twitter's sales fell in the second quarter from a year earlier for the first time since the outbreak. Twitter is likely to experience the same situation in the third quarter, but they have not yet announced when the results will be released.

Can Musk bring Twitter? Musk revealed that it is possible to develop a subscription product for Twitter to supplement advertising revenue, but it is not clear which products or features will charge extra. Twitter is about to launch a Twitter Blue subscription product that includes tweet editing, but the company says the product is aimed at influential users. Musk is not satisfied with this. He belittled the product in a text message to a friend in April.

As Mr Musk's Twitter may relax content censorship, there are fears that the social network's environment will deteriorate, undermining years of efforts by his "trust and security" team. On Thursday, Musk posted to advertisers that he did not want Twitter to become a "hell of freedom" to appease advertisers.

The past six months have also been difficult for Twitter employees, who mainly use the news to learn about the ups and downs of the roller coaster deal.

Many people are unhappy with Musk's involvement, and some employees question his ability to run social networking companies. The sexual harassment allegations made by a former SpaceX stewardess worried many Twitter employees. During a video Q & An in June, some employees mocked Mr Musk on the internal Slack channel. In the course of the deal, employees have been taunting and reprimanding the billionaire via Twitter.

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