It’s official: Elon Musk now owns Twitter.
Congratulations to Mr. Musk, who has purchased a troubled-but-wildly influential social media platform that has historically struggled to make money from the people who use it for free.
Congratulations also to the execs Musk fired as soon as he took over—CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde—who are taking big paychecks home because they got fired.
You see, there are two financial classes in this world: People who become poorer when they lose their job and people who become richer when they lose their job. Musk or no Musk, it’s good to be a Twitter exec.
So what happens now?
I can’t read minds. I interviewed Musk for Fast Company in 2011 and found him to be a smart and media savvy executive who was more comfortable discussing technical details than making interview small talk. I also can’t pretend that a one-hour work meeting with a corporate executive a decade ago gives me any special insight. But my guess?
Status quo & incremental changes.
Over the past few years, Musk has leaned hard into professional eccentricity and trollish behavior in the public sphere while simultaneously running Tesla and SpaceX (and now Twitter).
Musk’s new toy, which he’s tried to get out of buying many times, has a massive user base and a historic inability to actually make money as a business concern.
As hard as Musk works, I have doubts about the ability of any human being to run three large corporations at the same time.
I expect to see Twitter try to roll out more advertising products and expand monetizing programs like Super Follows. Kanye West is back on the platform and I expect that Musk will reinstate Donald Trump’s account. I expect Musk will use Twitter to his political benefit in other ways. I expect Musk will introduce a few high-profile adjustments to Twitter before becoming bored. I expect Twitter under Musk’s ownership to either continue on its current pathway of benign neglect or have a Musk-appointed micromanager.
Other takes I like:
The Wall Street Journal’s Patience Haggin & Suzanne Vranica: “Elon Musk Says Twitter Won’t Be ‘Free-for-All Hellscape,’ Addressing Advertisers’ Concerns.
Micah Sifry: “Elon Musk: “Après Moi, Le Déluge””
Rob Lennon on Musk Twitter from a growth perspective.

Other stuff on my Context Collapse radar:
The biggest advertising fail = Putting a pork billboard up in a Chicago neighborhood that’s pretty much all Orthodox Jewish, Muslim and Hindu (Love you, Devon Avenue!).


A new Pantone licensing fee in Adobe cloud products is fucking over graphic designers. (Addl context @ Cory Doctorow)



Also:
The inevitable is happening with lots of TV deals for TikTok celebrities.
Meta’s having metaverse problems.
Brian Morrissey on life after the newsletter boom.
Lyft now lets you book parking spots in cities via their app.
That FBI search of the ABC News producer keeps getting weirder and weirder.
No, the New York Times is not making an app for kids.
Amazon and luxury surveillance.
Snapchat rolling out new features for paid users.
SurveyMonkey might be up for sale.
Newsletter ad spending trends in 2022.
TikTok doing new rev share options for creators:


Neil Patel on the Google Search algorithm updates:
…And that’s it!
Well, Halloween’s almost here. Let’s close out with this classic: