It is the moment nobody was quite sure would actually ever happen: after months of drama, Elon Musk says his $44bn (\u00a338bn) deal to buy Twitter is complete.<\/p>\n
He announced the big news on Twitter itself, of course,\u00a0he has changed his bio to read \u201cChief Twit\u201d and declared \u201cthe bird is freed\u201d. Job done, as far as he is concerned.<\/p>\n
There has been no official confirmation as yet, and the silence from Twitter HQ so far has been rather deafening.<\/p>\n
But perhaps there is nobody there to send that email \u2013 Mr Musk has reportedly already fired chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and legal and policy executive Vijaya Gadde, while chairman Bret Taylor\u2019s LinkedIn profile suggests he is no longer at the firm either.<\/p>\n
So what might Mr Musk\u2019s Twitter look like?<\/p>\n
\u2018A digital town square\u2019<\/h2>\n
Mr Musk addressed potential advertisers in an uncharacteristically humble message posted on the site on Thursday. In it, he spoke of buying Twitter because he wanted to \u201ctry to help humanity\u201d, and said he wanted \u201ccivilisation to have a digital town square\u201d. He also accepted that his mission may fail.<\/p>\n
The fact that he wrote specifically to those who advertise on Twitter suggests he intends for now at least to stick with its digital advertising business model. That is despite this revenue starting to fall for giants like Google-owner Alphabet and Facebook-owner Meta, as the global financial crisis bites and firms find themselves with less cash to splash on marketing<\/p>\n
In the past he has spoken bombastically about wanting to lighten moderation, so that more voices can be heard more freely (Twitter has long been accused of favouring left-leaning, liberal messages, which it denies).<\/p>\n
Might he decide to bring back some of the more controversial tweeters, banned under the previous administration \u2013 former US president Donald Trump (who has previously said he had no desire to return), or more recently,\u00a0his friend Kanye West?<\/p>\n
I am not so sure. Mr Musk now offers a more curtailed vision, saying that the platform must remain \u201cwelcoming\u201d, must abide by national laws and must not become \u201ca free-for-all hellscape\u201d.<\/p>\n
West was banned for anti-Semitism and Mr Trump \u201cpermanently suspended\u201d for inciting violence \u2013 sounds a bit hellscapey to me.<\/p>\n Mr Musk has raged against the amount of spam and bot accounts he believes litter the site \u2013 Twitter has always disputed his claims that its official figure is far too low. He could order a mass cull, although that would probably affect everybody\u2019s all-important follower numbers, which could be an unpopular first move.<\/p>\n Perhaps his most intriguing hint so far is about his new company being the start of \u201cX, the everything app\u201d. He has never elaborated on that but many have suggested that he is referring to the creation of a kind of \u201csuper app\u201d along the lines of China\u2019s WeChat \u2013 a one-stop-shop for social media, messaging, finance, food orders \u2013 in a nutshell, everyday life admin.<\/p>\n The West does not yet have such a thing, although one could argue that Meta\u2019s WhatsApp and even Facebook Messenger are quietly morphing into services with multiple functions.<\/p>\n Mr Musk has not disguised his love of cryptocurrency and Binance, the world\u2019s largest crypto-exchange, is a proud investor in his vision (according to the press release I received just after 05:00 BST).<\/p>\n Could we see a Twitter set-up for businesses to accept payments \u2013 in crypto? That would be a hit with crypto fans and a horror for those who warn that crypto remains a risky choice, unregulated and therefore unprotected if anything goes wrong.<\/p>\n What we do know about Mr Musk is that he is visionary, volatile, ambitious, and creative. We can guarantee the changes will start rolling in \u2013 and already some Twitter fans are saying the change of leadership will drive them away.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,\u201d said the investor Peter Thiel of the tech industry, long before the meme \u201cexpectations vs reality\u201d became a thing. With Mr Musk, we may well get both.<\/p>\n![\"What](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/1666971079_665_image-122.png\" "\\"What")
<\/figure>\nSpam and super app hints<\/h2>\n