Elon will use Twitter as part of something to make loads of money. Elon Musk thinks big and will compete for everything. He thinks global and beyond. Elon will obviously compete for everything. He will compete with Facebook, WeChat, Apple and go for everything interesting and monetizable in the internet and communications. Twitter will be a piece of a massive SpaceX, Tesla and massive Crypto e-commerce, entertainment and communications plan.
Elon has made an offer to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share and $43 billion for the entire company.
Sasha Yanshin think Elon ramps up buying shares on the open market in the few weeks it takes Twitter’s board to consider this offer and go through the process of dealing with it.
Elon can do this deal without selling more Tesla shares. Elon can find people who share his vision and are willing to go in on the deal with him. Tesla Daily describes this.
Gene Munster of Loup Ventures has an analysis.
Put it all together; Musk taking over Twitter is more likely than not.
— Gene Munster (@munster_gene) April 14, 2022
Second, investors should welcome Musk first principles approach to running companies. That means he has a high capacity to try new things including direct monetization.
— Gene Munster (@munster_gene) April 14, 2022
First, I believe he can raise the money. The deal orbits around the investment theme that Loup calls the political corporation. Companies that have a political basis are winning investor support. Musk free speech call to action along with who he is will likely raise the capital.
— Gene Munster (@munster_gene) April 14, 2022
Elon Musk does not have small plans. Elon can take a social media business and take it to the top tier of over 2 billion users. Tiktok has over 1 billion users. Elon with Starlink can backend bandwidth for video services within 3 years.
Twitter currently is a vastly underused and badly monetized resource. 
WeChat is the only app in China to have over one billion active users and is one of only five apps in the world have surpassed that milestone. WeChat Pay, which was built using the framework of Tenpay, has over 900 million users and has supplanted AliPay as the most popular payment service in the country.
Tesla has created an appstore and is creating an app ecosystem.
The Tesla dashboard experience that has been designed to take advantage of the 17-inch touchscreen in the Tesla Model S, Tesla Model X, and Tesla Model 3. At the touch of a finger you have a suite of tools and apps that will enhance your daily commute, business travel, leisure and vacation.
If Tesla reaches 20 million cars per year by 2026 they will have an installed base of 40 million at that time. Tesla’s selling at that rate to 2030 would mean an installed base of 120 million by 2030.
SpaceX Starlink just passed 250,000 users. Starlink could be around 1 million users by the end of this year and could reach 200 million users by 2025.
The generation 2 Starlink satellites will be able to handle the entire internet. Elon Musk will have space satellites for a global communications backbone.
Future Starlink satellites will likely weigh around one ton (~2200 lb) each, be capable of a maximum individual bandwidth of some 60-80 Gbps, and have solar arrays capable of supplying something like 15-20 kilowatts to power an army of antennas. If SpaceX ultimately wins FCC approval, the ~30,000 satellite Starlink Gen2 constellation as proposed would have a total instantaneous bandwidth of at least 500 terabits per second (Tbps) over land (~1800 Tbps including ocean coverage). As of 2020, the total installed bandwidth of global internet infrastructure was estimated to be 600 Tbps.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Why are you capping for the SEC? lol. Imagine loving the civil service
The government regulatory environment is hostile to Elon currently
I think he will be able to do it. He's much smarter than people give him credit for.
I predict he will overcome all of these political obstacles being set before him. But they will be able to slow him down- to our detriment.
If he were to hop aboard the political bandwagon he would speed along very nicely, but then he would be a slave to the political establishment.
And those people want to enslave us all.
PayPal is unfinished business for Mr Musk. Buy Twitter and launch cryptocurrency on the back of it sounds like a plan.
I'm telling you guys once Starship goes online, Elon is instantly going to be a trillionaire.
Seeing how he's going to colonize Mars with all that money will be unfathomable to see.
Phone companies are by law common carriers with no choice in the matter; whether that applies to the low level infrastructure of the internet depends on whether Republicans ("No it doesn't!") or Democrats ("Yes it does!") control the FCC.
But something like web service? To the best of my knowledge, those are all contract carriers, with published terms of service that clients sign up to, so we're already in that world– a lot of hate groups find it hard to get web hosting service, as far as I know. (They certainly did after Charlottesville back in 2017.)
And that's because the legal doctrine so far is that web hosters– just like social media services– also have First Amendment rights which include not being compelled to speak. Those rights are not cancelled out by someone else wanting to use their equipment.
And ultimately, Twitter cannot meaningfully prevent someone from getting their message out. They can only say, "Not on our equipment, go try Facebook, or Instagram, or YouTube, or whatever. Or in the last resort, go build your own. We can't stop you." (Which is, of course, what the former president tried and failed to do. No one's fault but his own.)
As censorship goes, Twitter not wanting to deal with you is pretty toothless. If Twitter were a monopoly, I might feel different, but they aren't, and even then the remedy would be anti-trust.
You're just being tactically obtuse.
So you'd be okay with internet infrastructure providers (all private afaik) deciding what is allowed on the internet? How about private phone companies? Should they be allowed to cut off service for political reasons? Maybe we can bring back company towns while we're at it and allow any private toll roads to prevent "baddies" from traveling.
Is that the same LA Times that said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russia disinformation? And the same LA Times that reported for 2 years that President Trump colluded with Russia?
Wow. You can REALLY pick 'trustworthy' news sources.
You are the very definition of disinformation…
Twitter is censoring President Biden?
Huh.
Well, too bad for him.
But that's not censorship. That's what freedom of speech actually is– Twitter gets to decline his business. Maybe he can use ex-president Trump's social media thingie.
Twitter is being allowed to practice censorship of a sitting US president, and countless right wing voices, using “we’re a private entity” as cover, and completely aligned with the dem political party. Which is the basic day to day example of gov – Corp alignment that defines fascism. Which of course is far less of a problem than musk taunting someone, in your utterly bizarre world. You’re a joke.
As you note, there are examples like Alipay and WeChat in China that have demonstrated potential for social media apps that nothing in the rest of the world emulates. With Musk’s leadership Twitter could challenge Facebook and other bigger players.
Fair question, but I am certain. It was in the news.
This is the same "Oh, surely that doesn't apply to me!" attitude that
Hillary was (rightly) raked over the coals for. It is not, in my experience, an attitude unique to the right or the left. Rather, it is an attitude common among those with power, because they are often allowed to get away with it.
I would be fascinated to know if "so dishonest that he requires legal oversight to post on Twitter" will have any bearing the next time he files that paperwork.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-elon-musk-security-clearance-20190307-story.html#:~:text=Musk%20has%20refiled%20his%20SF,satellites%20for%20the%20U.S.%20military.
How certain are you that Musk, himself, holds a security clearance?
I don't know anything about it, but I imagine it could be that, while there are some people at SpaceX who do have (and need) security clearance, it seems it would not be necessary for the top execs to have security clearance.
Please note that I am not saying you are wrong that Musk has a security clearance. I just wonder how certain you are that he does. I'd kind of expect that the list of people who have security clearance is not made public. If that list is not public, how do you know whether Musk has a security clearance?
(Don't answer if you'd have to kill me if you did tell me.)
You may not understand the marijuana issue in its full context. Elon Musk is not just some guy in a hipster loft in New York. He's not even just some CEO. In order to handle NASA and military satellites, Musk has a government security clearance.
This did not happen by accident, and was not forced on him. He had to ask for this to happen. Public consumption of illegal drugs, whether or not you, or I, or anyone else happens to think the drugs should be illegal, is not just a flagrant violation of the law, but a flagrant violation of the standards necessary to have and hold that clearance.
There's no real way around this– he asked to enter into a voluntary and serious agreement in order to get something he wanted, and then ignored it and acted like it was unfair to expect him to keep his word. It is dishonest behavior at the very core and should not be encouraged.
By anyone.
We certainly shouldn't be encouraging dishonest behavior from people holding security clearances.
good for him. maybe conservatives may be able to use twitter again.
I think you are saying that he says and does as he likes. Sounds like the right person to drive free speech.
Too much regulation – taking a puff in a land where it is legal but violates some terms and conditions – should not be followed or encouraged. By you.
So you can't do it, won't admit it, still insist you're right, and are indecent and dishonest.
Thanks for clearing that up.
We're done here.
Those who run Twitter may not be running around publicly flaunting their controversial stances/actions in all cases, but that in fact makes them that much worse. They've worked behind the scenes to banish large swaths of people around the world from the modern public square. Including a former president of the United States. That far outweighs any borderline stock memeing or drunken "pedo" tweets, and is far more dangerous to democracy than smoking a joint while having a security clearance.
Elon will whip that unpopular dying Twitter into a regular Truth Social in no time!
No, that's not what I'm saying at all, and I think you know that.
But just in case there's an honest misinterpretation or disagreement here, I invite you to show me where the current Twitter board members all run around accusing people of being "pedo boys", or publicly flout laws of importance to their security clearances, or run so afoul of SEC regulations that they're required to have legal oversight of their twitter posts, etc?
Can you do so *right here in public?*
Because if you can't, an act of intellectual honesty and common decency would be to admit that you're wrong.
I hope he either fixes Twitter or buries it.
Pump it, dump it, and influence it into insolvency.
Twitter needs to go down.
So what you're saying is he has all the same flaws of the people who currently run Twitter, but rather than being a censorious wanna be thought policeman, Musk will at least make overtures at offering more free speech on the platform? That seems like a step in the right direction.
Some people see him as a "free speech absolutist" (because that's how he markets himself.)
I see a spoiled brat with poor impulse control who makes enough trouble (for himself and everyone else) without having a billion dollar gold-plated megaphone. Because let's remember, this is the guy who:
He may be the right guy to build rockets and electric cars
His instability and inability to abide by a whole bunch of laws make him a terrible person to privately own something like Twitter.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/musk-is-off-the-twitter-board-of-directors-the-tesla-twitter-bot-army-marches-on