Twitter shareholders officially accepted Elon’s offer of $46 billion. What does this mean?

Elon filed a motion to buy Twitter for $46.5 billion on April 20th. A deal backed by a group of banks lead by Morgan Stanley. That deal was accepted today on April 25th. We are watching history shape before our eyes.

Elon said a few things are going to change right away. 

Elon will be making Twitter’s algorithm public. So there will be no behind-the-scenes banning or disapprovals. It will be clear how the algorithm works and why something is, or is not, banned.

He will also be shutting down the “spam bots” and “authenticating all humans.” 

And finally, he’s giving people the ability to edit tweets.

To do these changes he will be moving Twitter from a publicly traded company to a private corporation.

“Constantly think about how you could be doing things better.”

Elon Musk

Why this is going to be good for social media moving forward?

Elon describes Twitter as the town square of social media. And feels freedom of speech and public discourse should be protected (within the confines of the law).

This is good for Twitter and also for social media in general. 

For one, Elon wants to reinvent Twitter’s business model. And if anyone can do it, Elon can. 

This means the spammy marketing style that has plagued Twitter, and now LinkedIn, is going the way of the dinosaurs. This is great news for anyone who cares about trust and creating meaningful relationships with paid ads. Anything spammy isn’t doing any favours for the many great ethical businesses that rely on paid ads to form new client relationships.

People use the different social platforms for different purposes.

Facebook is where you come to connect and stay-in-touch with friends, family and groups. It’s a place to build relationships.

Youtube, Instagram and Tiktok are where you go to become influencers.

LinkedIn is the place to grow your professional reputation and it’s incredibly powerful for B2B networking.

Elon Musk is very influential.

Other social platforms, even Facebook, will look closely to what Elon is doing. And will most likely follow suit.

With Twitter’s new mandate for transparency, it’s possible that Facebook will bring more transparency to their own review process of ads and posts as a result. This can only be a good thing. As it will help advertisers, who want to comply, better understand what they can do to ensure their ads fall within the community guidelines. The number of false positives is astonishing.

The one constant with social is change. We love it. It keeps cracking open the flood gates of innovation and sparks new exciting ideas of what’s possible with social.

We’re living through the most exciting revolution to media of our time. The rise of social media has connected people in new ways that wouldn’t have seemed possible just a decade ago.

And that rise has opened the doors to what’s possible for businesses. And it’s changed the lives of many as a result.

We’re looking forward to the success of Twitter, and will be keeping a close pulse on the changes this brings to the industry as a whole.