Speaker 1: Mr Elon Musk has closed the deal to take Twitter private.
Speaker 1: It's a forty four billion dollar transaction, and now a
Speaker 1: number of top executives will be leaving the company. We
Speaker 1: want to unpack this very briefly with our Ed Ludlow,
Speaker 1: who is Bloomberg's West Coast correspondent. Ed always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Saga is a bit of an understatement here. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was just unbelievable. It's a done deal. Many people
Speaker 1: thought it would get done at a lower price. That
Speaker 1: didn't happen. Forty four billion is what he set out
Speaker 1: to do originally. Where do we go from here? Hey,
Speaker 1: you read the intro. What's happening? Um? You know the
Speaker 1: mechanics of it? Are you know that each shareholder of
Speaker 1: note for Twitter will get fifty four dollars and twenty
Speaker 1: cents for each share that they held. I mean that's
Speaker 1: important to state. Um, you know. The big headline this
Speaker 1: evening is not so much that the deal has closed.
Speaker 1: It's the top four executives at Twitter have left the company. Paragagwel,
Speaker 1: the CEO, Ned Siegel, the CFO, Viget Gadda, who is
Speaker 1: basically chief legal and policy officer, and then Sewan Eedgett,
Speaker 1: who was very senior legal counsel. Um. You know this
Speaker 1: this is the new era, right wit are under mask
Speaker 1: and you know we can talk about kind of what
Speaker 1: will change on the platform and the company. But you know,
Speaker 1: we've had a good sense throughout Thursday here in San
Speaker 1: Francisco that this deal was basically done anyway, The paperwork
Speaker 1: has been been completed for a number of hours now
Speaker 1: and it was just a matter of time. How can
Speaker 1: we be certain about what their platform is going to
Speaker 1: look like going forward? I mean we have Elon Musk
Speaker 1: giving a reassurance to advertisers earlier that Twitter is not
Speaker 1: going to become a forall hellscape another colorful turn of phrase.
Speaker 1: But he wants to project free speech where recent history
Speaker 1: suggests that squaring that circle might be challenging. Are we
Speaker 1: going to see President Trump returned so many unanswered questions? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think the the important thing to say is that
Speaker 1: there was a reason that Musk to to take Twitter private? Right?
Speaker 1: Why by Twitter? You know, we've learned throughout this saga,
Speaker 1: and it has been a six month saga that Musk
Speaker 1: was worried about the box issue on the platform. We
Speaker 1: know that Musk was kind of believes that Twitter has
Speaker 1: this big societal influence despite its relative small user base.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about two hundred fifty million daily users.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you compare it to say a Facebook,
Speaker 1: for example, the user base is much bigger. Um. But
Speaker 1: he felt he couldn't make the changes that he thought
Speaker 1: were necessary to improve Twitter and to safeguard what's good
Speaker 1: about it without taking the company private. So that's done now. Um,
Speaker 1: there are there are some concrete things he's proposed, right,
Speaker 1: open sourcing the algorithm, so there's more transparency. The user
Speaker 1: can understand why a tweet appears in the thigh line
Speaker 1: in the timeline the way that it does, in the
Speaker 1: position that it does. Um, you know, go ahead, Sorry, well,
Speaker 1: no to that point. I mean, I was reading that
Speaker 1: he Musk has asked engineers from Tesla to meet with
Speaker 1: some of the folks over Twitter on the software side.
Speaker 1: I mean that this is the thin end of the wedge,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It is? Yeah, Kurt Wagon and I broke
Speaker 1: that story earlier today. I mean, um, well, part of
Speaker 1: that story is that Elon Musk does not know everything right,
Speaker 1: and he needs to understand very quickly how Twitter the
Speaker 1: platform is built. My understanding is that lots of Twitter
Speaker 1: engineers and products leads were literally buddied up with some
Speaker 1: Tesla engineering talent and they sat down together and taught
Speaker 1: them how the code the powers Twitter works, which is
Speaker 1: an astonishing thing to say out loud, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you. Um, but that's the reality of where we are.
Speaker 1: We know that Musk has been in the building in
Speaker 1: San Francisco in the last twenty four hours talking to staff. Um,
Speaker 1: I'll go to your Trump point. You know, Musk has
Speaker 1: actually been pretty clear on where he stands on the
Speaker 1: future of Twitter. He does not believe in outright bands
Speaker 1: on the platform. He believes in time else So if
Speaker 1: you make a polity breach or if you say something
Speaker 1: that is harmful, rather than blocking or cancer closing your
Speaker 1: account permanently, he thinks you should be suspended for a
Speaker 1: limited period of time. He said that he would bring
Speaker 1: Trump back to the platform. Um, so let's see if
Speaker 1: it happens. We we don't know. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think there's also the model. Right. What we heard from
Speaker 1: Musk in this open letter to advertisers this morning, which
Speaker 1: you reference, is that of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising, right,
Speaker 1: He's not just going to do away with that overnight,
Speaker 1: but he has floated different business models, including subscriptions to
Speaker 1: sort of premium tier access to certain Twitter users. If
Speaker 1: you want to see somebody's premium content, and you know
Speaker 1: you want to follow me out at Ludlow and see
Speaker 1: whatever I'm reporting, then he's flowed the idea of paying
Speaker 1: for the privilege of that. Um So, I'd be curious
Speaker 1: to get your your read on what he does down
Speaker 1: the road, but we're not going to have time to
Speaker 1: unpack that and whether he then brings it back into
Speaker 1: a some kind of publicly traded company at some point
Speaker 1: and tries to realize a premium for the time that
Speaker 1: he has spent reorganizing this company. Ed, good stuff. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being with us, Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow,
Speaker 1: our West Coast correspondent,