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Is Elon Musk turning Twitter’s eagle into a turkey?

With his takeover of Twitter, Musk has proven himself to be more of an agent of chaos than a disrupter. Disrupters have been celebrated as the innovators and drivers of the new economy, blazing new trails and finding new markets, but as Twitter users, employees and advertisers have discovered in the last few weeks there is a big difference between disruption and wholesale carnage.

Since his takeover of Twitter for $44 billion Musk has forgotten the cardinal rule of takeovers and senior management changes – don’t do anything for a few months. Unless there is an absolute crisis, the best thing new management can do is nothing at all. In a buy-out, this is the time to learn about your new toy and reassure your clients and employees that all is well. From this base of stability and knowledge, changes and innovations can be slowly introduced without destroying the company.

This is not, however, Elon Musk’s way. On day one he posted a tweet of himself walking into Twitter HQ carrying a kitchen sink, saying: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” He immediately began making untested changes to the platform, making major policy announcements in real time via tweet and then immediately reversing himself, firing and rehiring key staff, and generally trolling Twitter users and the world from his new platform. He fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy chief Vijaya Gadde in the first couple of weeks.

The result has been a rush for the door, both in long-time users and advertisers. Twitter has (or had) roughly 450 million monthly active users. In FY 2021 advertising services generated USD $4.5 billion for Twitter, or about 89% of its revenue. As a result of the chaos and criticism of Twitter’s rudderlessness, advertisers have canceled or “put on pause” their ad buys. To date these include General Mills, the Volkswagen Group, General Motors, Pfizer, United Airlines, Audi, Farvel, and Carlsberg. Their concerns are not just about a drop in Twitter users, but also “concerns about a rise in misinformation, hate speech, and other distasteful content under his watch.”

This is also a major concern for thousands of marketing specialists, investor relations professionals, journalists, media and others who support and report on the small to medium cap public markets. In a few years Twitter has become a cornerstone for companies getting their stories out to a wider audience through press releases, corporate updates, CEO interviews and presentations. Facebook and LinkedIn are also part of the social media ecosystem, but reach and serve different markets.

It is also not just about audience size. According to its public filings, Twitter:

“…creates tailored advertising opportunities by using an algorithm to make sure promoted products make it into the right users’ timelines, search results, profile pages, and Tweet conversations. Advertisers have the ability to target an audience based on multiple criteria. Twitter provides ways for advertisers to build and grow an audience interested in the products or services they are offering. Advertisers also have the option to pay for ads that will appear at the top of the trending-topics list or timeline.”

If Twitter crashes and burns companies and investor relations professionals will be faced with a fragmentation of their social media buys. Facebook has far more users than Twitter (with roughly 2.96 billion monthly active users as of Q3 2022) and uses its own ad targeting algorithms, but reaches a different audience than Twitter. For business, Twitter’s value in the space is as an aggregator of users, particularly journalists and media outlets, and no other similar platform comes close to its audience. Mastodon and CounterSocial are popular destinations for people fleeing Twitter, but they are both small, ad-free, appeal to different demographics, and it will be a long while before they accumulate an audience or for companies to re-create their hard-won audience of Twitter followers.

It may well be, in the phrase often attributed to Mark Twain, that reports of Twitter’s death are greatly exaggerated. The brand, the technology and the market are all valuable properties. Maybe not worth $44 billion by the time Musk is finished with his capricious vanity meddling, but a valuable property nonetheless. Musk may have put up a lot of money from the sale of his Tesla shares, but the financiers who put up the rest of the funding for the buyout will have something to say seeing their investment evaporate. Major banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Mizuho, Morgan Stanley, MUFG, and Societe Generale committed to giving Musk $13 billion for the acquisition. Morgan Stanley alone has contributed nearly $3.5 billion for the acquisition. There will be a point when they demand that Musk stop running with scissors.

Companies and their marketers are holding their collective breath as they watch one of their most useful investment relations tools speed towards the cliff, wondering what they will replace it with.

In the words of Elon Musk in a tweet addressed specifically to his “Dear Twitter Advertisers” on October 27th who were jumping ship:

“Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise… Let us build something extraordinary together.”

It may still be possible, if he can restrain himself for five minutes in his reckless campaign to tear it down.




The Secret that Elon Musk and Twitter Share

Elon Musk reneging on a deal is hardly a shocker for me. I remember when he promised to only use US-based battery materials in his Teslas produced only in the States, and well – we told him that he couldn’t make this happen, but did it ever get him some attention. So, while it is incomprehensible to me what it must be like when you are the richest man on the planet, I have some insight into Elon’s autism spectrum disorder and how Twitter could still —- close their deal.

Elon has publicly described himself as having Asperger’s Disorder, which is defined as an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) …or was. The Asperger’s diagnosis only started being used by the medical professional in the mid-nineties. Later they would pop back and forth between Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD) and Asperger’s and that of course, became quite confusing to parents and educational facilities attempting to create infrastructure for the diagnoses. Today, Asperger’s is rejected by many physicians and simply referred to as ASD. While Elon has popularized this dated diagnosis and added some sizzle to Asperger’s, it is my opinion that this can be an extraordinarily debilitating life challenge that can make functioning in our society nothing short of brutal.

So, what is my secret for Twitter to pull this deal out of the flames?

A person with ASD is driven by attention. Most people are, however, what makes ASD individuals different is that they get a kind of high* from it. And the part of this equation that is critical in understanding ASD is that the high an individual derives from attention is indifferent to positive or negative attention.

What does this mean? While most people would feel threatened by a litigation suit over a ‘tousled’ $44B deal falling into the crapper, Elon is getting – what? He is getting the high-octane drive that he thrives on – he is receiving endless cavalcades of attention.

My advice to Twitter? It is simple. Call me and put together some of the brightest media minds in the nation to collaborate on how to make buying Twitter have more appeal (aka, higher levels of media attention) than losing it. As we can all see by the headlines, Elon is getting his thrill with the impact of saying no, and the reasons he is presently proposing are currently shielded by the pleasure of the raging media rivers of attention from the ability to be free from the types of horror any of the rest of us would feel if Twitter decided to sue any of us over the loss of a $44B deal.

I am not a scientist, but I am a mother of an adult that has ASD, and the word ‘high’ is the only way I can describe what I have seen in endless interactions with professionally diagnosed ASD individuals. And with this experience, I can bet that Elon is not stressed about the potential tens of millions in legal fees and if anything – I can also bet that Elon will be seeking the most decadent magnetic legal team for drawing more attention to guess who? Ah yes, Elon Musk.

At this moment in time, Twitter is the most powerful media platform that the world has ever seen, and it runs similar to an ASD mindset as it’s powered by energy — driven by attention. The more tweets, the more the news is deemed relevant, and Elon understands this, which is why he needs to nuke the fake accounts that throw off the algorithms that monitor our society’s pulse on what we believe matters versus what we believe does not.

And if Twitter can hang tough on the wisdom of understanding the ASD model, which innately they do — Musk is the perfect man to lead Twitter.




Klip on how to be an online media influencer in the resource sector

March 14, 2018 — “Once you say something or you write a tweet you are responsible for that knowledge if you are sharing it, or for the action which you are thinking will be for the best benefit of shareholders of your own company,” states Kirill Klip in an interview with InvestorIntel’s Jeff Wareham. 

Jeff Wareham: Kirill is really the number one online media influencer I think in this space today. Kirill you are all over social media. Our industry should probably give you a big thank you. What drove you to get so involved? 

Kirill Klip: Thank you very much for this praise. It is a lot of very hard work. When I started my blog it was very interesting. What I found, of course, English is not my native language. But what was very interesting was, before you can write even a very short article, you have to really study the subject. Twitter is great in the sense that it disciplines your mind because you are communicating with very short messages, so you have to know your subject. You have to be there frequently, otherwise people will not be following you and you have to be interesting, otherwise people will get bored. I love this way of communicating, of explaining this education. It is very easy, but very hard when your investors can always hit you back and ask you questions about the company. 

Jeff Wareham: You certainly are out there and accountable for what you have to say, are you not? 

Kirill Klip: Exactly. You know what I found? Maybe the first time, 10 years ago, and then it became crystalized for me 5 years ago, why a lot of mining executives or executives are shy of this kind of public stance on a lot of things. Now I know because once you say something or you write a tweet you are responsible for that knowledge if you are sharing it, or for the actions which you are thinking will be for the best benefit of shareholders of your own company. Then shareholders or others can show you the tweet. Kirill you were talking about this, where is it? It is very, very interesting, this fear, when you have an almost immediate response from your core investors or participants in our industry.

Jeff Wareham: I have been on Twitter a long time, but LinkedIn not so long. I am amazed on how much information you get out on LinkedIn.

Kirill Klip: You know what is very interesting? Sometimes I do not know 100% about a particular subject. For example, I am quite good about lithium, lithium batteries, electric cars. But, for example, I do not have a clue how many electric buses are sold in China. I can just fly one question out and I will receive, like, 10 top experts tweeting me back. Then I can check the source, and within half an hour I know the best knowledge maybe from another person all across the world. It is fascinating how social media really opens us in the sense, that we can not only educate other people with our knowledge, but also we can gain and crystalize the knowledge in the industry very fast…to access the complete interview, click here.