Between the challenge to Putin, his clear opinion on the coronavirus and his support for Kanye West’s presidential candidacy, Elon Musk is regularly talked about on Twitter, which he also intends to buy.
So, we all know that the owner of Tesla uses this platform a lot. What we sometimes forget is how incomprehensible his tweets can be to us mortals. We also sometimes omit the influence they can have.
This is why we propose in this article to return to the phenomenon “Elon Musk and Twitter”.
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What is Tesla Motors?
Tesla is a brand automotive which markets electric cars with integrated artificial intelligence. Since 2003 and under the impetus of Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, this brand, formerly Tesla Motors, has positioned itself on electric cars with a advanced technology.
After several years of existence, the brand will then increase in power, when Elon Musk becomes the CEO of the brand from 2008. The objective of Elon Musk is then to market electric cars with high technological value for the consumer market. From 2010, the Californian company goes public and prepares to become an automotive giant in the following years.
Today, billionaire Elon Musk has a special bond with Tesla, since it was with him that the brand experienced a dizzying rise. The action of the brand on the stock market now exceeds that of major brands such as Volkswagen or Ford or General Motors. Tesla’s success lies in the quality of the electric cars offered, but it also appears as a pioneering brand in this field.
Update: Elon Musk suspends his takeover of Twitter, but does not give up
The saga has just experienced yet another twist. Elon Musk decided on Friday May 13 to postpone his acquisition of the famous social network. The agreement is suspended pending details around the calculation suggesting that fake accounts and spam accounts represent only 5% of total users”, he said… on Twitter.
He said from the start that one of his priorities would be to clean up users in order to drive these fake users out of the social network. A tweet that earned the action of the social network collapse more than 20% in the electronic exchanges preceding the opening of Wall Street.
Later, the billionaire boss assured that he was “still committed” to buying Twitter.
Why this backtracking?
The management of Twitter had retorted to him, at the beginning of May, that there were only 5% of “bots” (fake accounts powered by robots) on the platform. A claim that Musk seems to take with some caution.
It should be added that the clouds seemed to accumulate in recent days around the agreement. First, the rout of tech stocks on the stock market has some commentators wondering if Elon Musk might end up finding that he has paid too much for Twitter. In this respect, the suspension of the offer could be a way of restarting the negotiations.
Elon Musk’s offer also caught the attention of the SEC (the American stock market policeman) who opened an investigation into the circumstances in which it was made. He reportedly said too late that he amassed Twitter shares before making his offer. The SEC therefore suspects him of having masked his real intentions.
How, in a tweet, Elon Musk changes the course of things?
This example is just one more example illustrating the influence of Elon Musk with his tweets that surprise and make noise. With concrete consequences for the companies and brands concerned.
GameStop, Shopify, Signal, Etsy or CD Projek can attest to this. Being quoted by Elon Musk in a tweet was enough to take off the share price of these five companies. The positions of one of the most influential personalities on the Web are now scrutinized by financial analysts and budding traders alike.
On Twitter, the richest man in the world has become the troublemaker of the financial markets. With his untimely publications, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX has the power to boost the prices of assets whose merits he has chosen to praise to his 44.1 million subscribers.
The example of bitcoin
The influence of the successful businessman among retail investors has grown steadily over the years. They consider him a visionary genius, even a guru. As a result, today, his positions are scrutinized.
Not long ago, it was enough for Elon Musk to replace the minibiography of his Twitter account with the emoji and the hashtag “bitcoin”, for the queen of cryptocurrencies climbed 20% in less than 24 hours.
Retrospective: 8 tweets from Elon Musk that caused controversy
With the possible takeover of Twitter, Elon Musk is creating a new coup, he who is used to controversial releases on the platform. The proof in eight tweets that made noise:
April 2018
Elon Musk admits having succumbed to” mistake “ over-automation at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., plant, missing its stated production target of 5,000 Model 3s per week.
August 2018
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is suing Elon Musk on suspicion of “false or misleading statements”, after he tweeted his plans to delist Tesla for $420 a share. Musk says he set this price target after learning “the importance of that number in marijuana culture and thinking his girlfriend would find it funny”.
February 2019
The SEC re-pins a tweet stating that “Tesla made zero cars in 2011, but will make around 500,000 in 2019”. He corrects the situation by explaining that he wanted to speak of an annualized production rate, that is to say 10,000 cars per week, but that deliveries for the year are still estimated at 400,000.
April 2019
Elon Musk promises the commissioning of one million robot-taxis (autonomous vehicles) on the roads in 2020. Objective difficult to foresee today…
May 2020
The billionaire himself judges the value of Tesla’s stock ” too high “ and caused its price to fall by 10% in one session, to the chagrin of investors.
May 2021
“You can now buy a Tesla with bitcoins”, said Elon Musk on Twitter, before backtracking, justifying this decision by the environmental impact linked to cryptocurrency mining. Still on Twitter, Elon Musk however praises the merits of “dogecoin”, a cryptocurrency originally conceived as a joke.
November 2021
By asking his followers if he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares, Elon Musk then aroused the interest of more than 3.5 million Internet users. “Lately there has been a lot of talk about unrealized gains as a means of tax evasion, so I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla shares. Do you support this? » he writes. “I will respect the results of this poll, whatever that means.” Nearly 58% of voters answer “Yes”, while the sale could bring in the businessman some 21 billion dollars.
March 2022
On March 14, Elon Musk challenges Vladimir Putin in a “man-to-man fight”, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.“Do you accept this fight? »he asks him, specifying to an Internet user who is quite serious about his intentions to confront the strong man of the Kremlin.
And he hasn’t finished talking about him…