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Let’s Be Honest: We Have No Idea Why Elon Musk Is Buying Twitter

Photo by Chris J. Davis on Unsplash

A thought: Twitter has been languishing.

Their growth has been relatively dormant with few innovations and new features over the years. Their ad business has not scaled at pace with the advertising industry. Its ability to grow and retain users has been problematic. Its stock price has severely underperformed both their social media competitors, and the general tech industry at large. It has been challenged with content moderation (and more) for years… and that hasn’t been improved or resolved.

Twitter has been puttering along just fine.

That doesn’t make it bad or not relevant (I happen to love Twitter), it just means that it’s economic worth is not matched to its brand power or perceived impact on the zeitgeist. My personal feelings about Elon Musk are not relevant here. Maybe Twitter simply needs something/anything new because – from a business/leadership perspective – it’s not really growing/changing all that much (and, maybe, this is why the board has approved Elon’s offer?).

But I don’t know… and I wish more people would say the same thing.

Why is Elon making a bid for Twitter? I don’t know… and from what I’m reading/listening/watching, I haven’t seen a salient reason from any of the digital media experts, journalists and thought leaders. And, that’s very curious to me.

I’m going to be truthful…

Unlike many of the other pundits who are blabbing away, I’m not sure I fully understand any of this. I’m not sure why, considering how busy Elon is with Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, OpenAI and The Boring Company, that he even has time or energy for fixing what’s broken with Twitter and social media. If this is just about another billionaire trying to control a media property, fine (we’ve seen that story before… and so it goes.. history keeps repeating itself). That could be it. Still, I have no idea. I don’t think the Elon money or a changing of the guards will do that much to get more people to use Twitter more frequently (or encourage bigger media companies to spend more). But… I could be wrong… I wish I could be more insightful (because, that’s what companies pay me for), but I feel like the general media (and that includes me) are really missing something.

That “something” is the actual play that’s happening here… and there’s nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know.”

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.