Days after becoming the largest shareholder of micro-blogging site Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk has suggested three Twitter upgrades to enhance the company’s business model. Notably, Musk has earlier said that he is giving “serious thought” to building a new social media platform.
Taking to his Twitter account, Musk, who now has a 9.2 per cent stake or 73.5 million shares of common stock in Twitter said, “Everyone who signs up for Twitter Blue (i.e pays $3/month) should get an authentication checkmark. Blue already has a modifiable 20 second time to edit tweet feature. And no ads. The power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly enhanced if Twitter depends on advertising money to survive.”
In another tweet, he had asked his followers to vote in either “yes” or “no” to converting Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters to a homeless shelter since no one shows up anyway.
In another poll, he asked his followers whether ‘w” on Twitter should be deleted or not.
Notably, last week, Musk had asked the followers if they wanted an edit button, cheekily misspelling “yes” as “yse” and “no” as “on.” Following this, Twitter said that it is working on a way for users to edit their 280-character messages.
After joining the Twitter board on April 4, Musk said that he is looking forward to making “significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!”
On Friday, World of Statistics, a Los-Angeles based company posted a list of the Top 10 most followed Twitter accounts. The list included the Twitter accounts of former US President Barack Obama, singers Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Football player Cristiano Ronaldo, comedian Ellen Degeneres and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Retweeting the post, Musk said that most of these accounts rarely post on Twitter. His tweet said, “Most of these “top” accounts tweet rarely and post very little content. Is Twitter dying?”
Notably, even before he joined Twitter’s board, Musk, who is a power user of Twitter, has been a critic of the micro-blogging site over free speech. He had earlier targetted the microblogging platform for free speech and he even put out a tweet asking users if they believe Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech.
Musk's stake in Twitter is considered a passive investment, which means Musk is a long-term investor that's looking to minimize his buying and selling of the shares.
Welcoming him onboard, Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal had earlier said, “I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.”
