Elon Musk has apparently discovered that there may be more bots and fake accounts on Twitter than Twitter had led us all to believe. No sh$t Sherlock! This is turning into a proper soap opera that Succession is going to find to beat!
w/SocialMedia
Elon puts Twitter deal on hold
Back Story: The news broke yesterday (Friday):
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
He followed it with: “Still committed to the acquisition.”
The question is, is he really?
On the face of it, this is clear cut. Elon is calling into question Twitter’s public filings where Twitter have said spam/fake accounts are less than 5%. He’s taken to Twitter to say that he’s going to do random sampling of his following and work it out for himself.
On the quarterly earnings call at the end of April, Twitter released details of its user base. They reported daily active users were 229 million (up from 199 million a year ago). Crucially, Twitter stated in the statutory filing that spam accounts were less than 5% of the user base.
But here’s the thing, external audits put the figure closer to 13-15%. I know this. You know this (because I wrote it in a newsletter in the last couple of weeks.)
So, the question is, what’s this really about?
- Is this a smokescreen from Elon to get out of buying at $54.20, a price that seems overinflated and significantly above its market-determined natural level?
- Or, does he just want out altogether, because he’s gotten bored with it?
- Or, maybe he just can’t raise the money, given that the golden eggs from the Tesla goose aren’t looking so golden at the moment?
