this is the first tweet ever posted by
twitter's co-founder jack dorsey
and this is a tweet by elon musk the
richest man in the world announcing a 43
billion dollar bid to take over the
platform 16 years later his offer
sparked national coverage billionaire
elon musk he's offered to buy twitter
for 54.20 a share and says he now wants
to turn twitter into the world's quote
platform for free speech since that
first tweet in 2006 several different
contenders have looked to acquire
twitter let's look back at twitter's
previous suitors to figure out why those
ultimately fell through and what could
be different about this one
central to understanding twitter's
battle for leadership is co-founder jack
dorsey jack dorsey comes with this
generation of entrepreneurs in the
valley who really saw a new way of
communicating but twitter has been a
company that has long
had its ups and downs dorsey's first run
as ceo ended after one year amid
concerns that he was distracted by other
hobbies but in 2015 after he had founded
another company and as twitter looked to
revive its sagging user growth dorsey
was reappointed to the position the hope
was that his founder title would afford
him the leeway to make more significant
changes than twitter's previous ceo it
was seen as a huge comeback there was
comparisons to when steve jobs returned
to apple
just one year after dorsey reclaimed the
reigns and nearly three since the
company's flashy ipo some of the biggest
names in tech and entertainment looked
to buy twitter jack dorsey has said
essentially twitter is always for sale
has always been for sale the issue
around twitter is that it's there's
often seen as this potential prize that
big tech could buy and that's kind of
what jack dorsey is getting at is it
there's this thing out here that people
think that if they gussy it up it could
have incredible value
in september 2016 cnbc reported that the
software company salesforce was
considering a takeover of the social
media company salesforce already had a
partnership with twitter which began in
2012. that alliance allowed twitter to
feed social media data into salesforce's
analytics systems at the time the
interest in twitter was simple it was
about the data salesforce thought
there was useful information to be
gleaned and that it could have value to
its corporate customers
at the same time the walt disney company
considered an offer of its own in this
case it was twitter's moves into sports
streaming rather than a focus on data
that attracted the attention of then ceo
robert eiger espn a sports property
within the disney family was exploring
those efforts and they thought there
might be a potential that twitter could
beef up that offering
and then there was google's parent
alphabet for several years the tech
company's dominance in search and
advertising caused some analysts to
speculate that it would be best suited
to buy twitter but the company choosing
to focus on its other ventures like
driverless cars and artificial
intelligence ultimately didn't follow
through with an offer salesforce was the
final suitor remaining in 2016 after
others like disney grew skittish over
twitter's image disney has a lot of
brands within it uh but you know at the
core of that company is family
entertainment and one of the things that
you increasingly see on twitter is a lot
of unfamily-like activities it's easy to
understand why a company most associated
with mickey mouse might not want to get
into the gutter ultimately salesforce
walked away from pursuing a combination
too one of the challenges for any
company thinking about buying twitter is
you are stepping into a tech company but
you're also stepping into a company that
has like enormous policy decisions on
its plate right now
regarding freedom of speech regarding
content moderation the policy concerns
of buyers like disney are now the reason
for musk's desire to acquire twitter
elon musk has framed his interest in
twitter simply as fighting to protect
the freedom of speech elon seems to be
motivated by his civic concerns now we
cannot kind of divorce the reality of
the situation and that is elon musk
would benefit perhaps in a ted talk on
april 14th musk provided further details
about his plan to take twitter private i
should also say
the intent is is to
retain as many shareholders as is
allowed by the law in a private company
which i think is around 2000 or so elon
musk's comments about wanting to keep
shareholders involved in twitter
raised a lot of red flags with people
who have watched him operate in the past
it's something similar he said when he
wanted to take tesla private and there
are rules about how many investors can
be involved in these private companies
and that is one of the things that when
he killed that deal to take tesla
private was pointed at as part of the
rationale for why it didn't work but if
his offer is accepted he won't be the
first billionaire to own a key player in
the media there is a long history of
people with money looking for
trophy purchases that give them power
and influence and for elon musk owning
twitter controlling that pipeline into
millions and millions of people's lives
around the world that would be
incredibly powerful and it would give
him
some assurance that he could continue to
use that tool
musk may not be the only suitor for the
company some private equity firms are
now circling as well but it's still too
early to know if any will make a formal
bid in the meantime twitter has adopted
a poison pill that makes it hard for
shareholders to build their stake beyond
a set point in response to musk's bid