Elon Musk, Twitter’s largest shareholder, wonders if the social network is “dying”

Elon Musk, the Tesla owner who is now a Twitter board member, wondered in his typically provocative way on Saturday whether the social network is “dying,” alluding to accounts with many followers but very little activity.

“Most of these ‘super’ accounts rarely tweet and post little content. Is Twitter dying?” he wrote, adding a list of the 10 most subscribed profiles.

Former US President Barack Obama appears in the lead, with 131 million subscribers, followed by several entertainment stars (Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga…) and Elon Musk, who appears in eighth position, with 81 million followers.

“Justin Bieber has only tweeted once this year,” added the businessman, who posts about his businesses, personal thoughts and memes nearly every day.

After becoming the first shareholder of the Californian group on Monday, the billionaire specified, in a document sent to the stock market regulator, that his participation was “passive”, that is, that he did not intend to influence the great strategic decisions of the platform.

But then he was invited to join the company’s board by its CEO, Parag Agrawal, who sees him as “a passionate and intense critic of the network, which is exactly what we need.”

Musk said he’s eager to start making “significant improvements to Twitter” soon, asking his followers in a poll if they’d like to see an “edit” button added to the social network (which would allow a tweet to be edited after it’s posted). publish online).

Twitter later said it will start experimenting with that.

The founder of Tesla and SpaceX is scheduled to meet with Twitter employees soon for a question and answer session.

Several Twitter employees raised concerns after Musk joined the board, citing the billionaire’s comments about transgender people and his reputation as a difficult leader, according to internal discussion messages, cited by the Washington Post.

On Thursday, Musk posted a photo on Twitter of himself holding a joint, surrounded by a halo of smoke. The image, taken from one of his appearances on host Joe Rogan’s podcast, is accompanied by the caption: “The next Twitter board of directors will be great.”

juj / len / dg / rsr

–