The first days of the Mask on Twitter: board of directors, restrictions on power and work on the edit button
Billionaire Elon Musk bought a significant stake in Twitter and joined the company’s board of directors. He decided not to wait and immediately started working. About his first days in his new position – more.
Judging by the decisive start, the service is waiting for significant changes. And the first of them is the introduction of a tweet editing button.
Elon Musk will join the board of directors of Twitter
Twitter accepted Elon Musk to the Board of Directors. This was stated by the current CEO of Parag Agraval on his page. Now the billionaire will be able to make decisions together with other shareholders about the work of the social network – for example, the introduction of new functions, policy changes and more.
He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
Today, Musk is one of the company’s largest shareholders – he owns 9.2% of the shares (73.4 million shares). The deal became known on April 4, but the media reported that the businessman began acquiring a stake in the company on January 31 and ended on March 14. This means that when he asked his subscribers whether the social network is democratic enough and whether the world needs a new one, he was already one of the owners of Twitter and from the beginning was not going to create another service.
Buy Twitter will not be allowed in full
Among other things, it became known that while Musk is a member of the board of directors, his share in the company cannot exceed 14.9%. That is, he will not be able to buy Twitter completely and manage it alone.
- The businessman paid less than three billion dollars for his share.
- When the deal became known, the share price rose sharply: before it was worth $38-39, and after the announcement soared above $50.
- This enriched Mask himself by 15 billion per day.
- The company’s market capitalization rose above $40 billion.
- Even with all his wealth, he would have to sell shares of other companies to buy all 100% of Twitter.
Musk gets to work: the development of the tweet editing feature is confirmed
And finally, the most important thing. Jay Sullivan, head of Twitter’s consumer department, said the developers are already working on a new feature that allows users to edit published posts.
1/ We’ve been exploring how to build an Edit feature in a safe manner since last year and plan to begin testing it within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months. Sharing a few more insights on how we’re thinking about Edit 🧵 https://t.co/WbcfkUue8e
— Jay Sullivan (@jaysullivan) April 5, 2022
Twitter Blue is a premium version of the social network with exclusive features, which is distributed on a monthly subscription. Twitter Blue Labs is a laboratory for early testing of new features. Kindly note that Sullivan’s words do not mean that editing tweets will be available only to paid subscribers. This means that Twitter Blue users will be the first to try the new option.
It is known that testing will begin in the coming months, and while developers are trying to determine in what form it is best to implement the long-awaited opportunity. For example, they consider the time limit within which a message can be edited, as well as the availability of information about what has changed, as implemented today on Facebook.
It is unclear whether Musk became the “catalyst” that accelerated the introduction of the editing function, or whether his joining the Board of Directors coincided with this event. However, the official Twitter account has already confirmed that the idea did not come from the Mask poll.
According to Jay Sullivan, they have been working on the function for a year. In addition, back in 2018, Jack Dorsey, the company’s founder, said that the management of the social network “is considering the possibility of creating an edit button, but this issue requires careful study.”
