Why do people want to buy Twitter

Elon Musk is the latest rich to fall into Twitter’s trap.

In its nearly 16 years of existence, Twitter has had a reputation for not reaching its full potential, and possibly much more. Twitter’s conundrum is that it’s widely known but not widely used, financially successful but not overwhelmingly, sometimes well-managed but also chaotic, and influential in the interesting but also scary way.

The perpetual belief that Twitter is a great idea that couldn’t be any better has led many to think about acquiring the company to make it shine, but few want to actually own it.

Whether you’re on Twitter or most of the world doesn’t, what happens to the company matters. Twitter is the digital gathering place that world leaders increasingly fear and want to control, and where elected officials, activists, journalists and executives like Musk spread the word. their own and match-fixing.

Last week, Musk made a half-baked proposal for a Twitter acquisition. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

Maybe Musk will succeed in owning Twitter, if he cares long enough to find pockets that will help him afford the roughly $43 billion offer. Perhaps a billionaire, tech company, or other financial investor would buy it instead. Maybe no one buys Twitter.

Living with an uncertain future is nothing new for Twitter. You could spend days tallying up the number of times companies have considered buying a social media site or heard rumors of a potential sale.

Twitter has been put up for sale in perpetuity partly for technical reasons. Unlike a number of technology and media companies including Google, Facebook and The New York Times, Twitter does not have a special class of stock that gives the founders all but the right to veto a purchase. sell.

But there is also the perennial belief that Twitter must be something other than what it is. There is no shortage of people who believe that all Twitter needs are some fixes – another editing function, another management, a new kind of tech backbone, a change in advertising strategy, a reduction in costs and editing. application, or more loosely worded rules, as Musk wants.

Politicians and other influencers, including Musk, frequently complain that Twitter is censoring too much or too little. And investors on Twitter always say the company isn’t making enough money.

If I could boil that down to one sentence, it’s Twitter not Facebook, the company has 23 times more annual revenue than Twitter and nearly two billion daily users compared to Twitter’s 217 million. (Companies count users a little differently, but you get it right.)

“Twitter’s cultural influence is as big as Facebook’s, but it’s only one-twentieth,” said Mark Mahaney, who has followed Twitter for years as an investment analyst at Evercore ISI. That leads people to ask, “What’s up with Twitter? “” He say.

However, the people and companies that have scrutinized the Twitter purchase are mostly fearful. In 2016, Disney turned down the offer to buy it in part because executives were worried about tarnishing the company’s family-friendly image if it owned a silly social media app. reverse. Salesforce boss Marc Benioff changed his mind when Salesforce investors hated the idea of ​​a business software company owning Twitter.

Government agencies will most likely not allow companies that appear to be a good fit for Twitter, including Google and Facebook, to buy it because of antitrust concerns.

Twitter is too big, but not big enough either. It is good, but also not good enough. It’s not Facebook, which makes people want to buy but also don’t want. Twitter can give owners any kind of influence but also unwanted heat.

Musk may be one of the few people in the world brave enough (or stupid) to want to own Twitter and actually do it. Perhaps Musk is the one who can finally unleash Twitter’s potential. Or maybe he’ll just be on the long list of people who once believed they could.

Before we go…

• Ads may come to Netflix: The company revealed that it has lost subscribers and expects to lose more. In response, Netflix said that it plans to crack down on account sharers and – this is a big deal – will at some point sell a cheaper subscription bundled with ads, fellow Nicole My Sperling explains.

  More from Vox: Netflix has been the leader in streaming for a decade. “Now people are catching up.”

• Use the meme to help Ukraine: My colleague, Jane Arraf, has written about charity fundraising efforts for Ukrainians selling wartime comical imagery that often goes viral, including the Virgin Mary holding a anti-ship missiles.

• They are tech support and manage adult video streaming: Rest of World is behind the scenes of Colombia’s internet porn streaming industry, including online fixers for performers, reminding them of lunch breaks, and helping design daily themes for shows. webcam program. (Note that this article contains some sexually explicit descriptions.)

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