Book: CHARACTER LIMIT: HOW ELON MUSK DESTROYED TWITTER
Authors: Kate Conger and Ryan Mac
Published by: Cornerstone
Price: Rs 999
Elon Musk thought he was good at tweeting. So he initiated the acquisition of Twitter in April 2022 and he owned it a few months later.
In Character Limit, The New York Times reporters, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, offer thrilling glimpses of not only what went on behind the messy acquisition of Twitter but also the messier strategy implemented to run the show that included the rechristening of the platform to X as well as of the world’s richest man’s unpredictable behaviour.
Perhaps the acquisition
of the platform had something to do with his rivalry with the social media tycoon, Mark Zuckerberg. At one point, the two occasionally met to discuss larger topics like Artificial Intelligence. Musk was particularly “concerned by the possibility that companies like Facebook would harness their reams of data and technological resources to create AI that could destroy humanity”. Their relationship changed in 2016 when a SpaceX rocket exploded on the launch
pad with one of Facebook’s satellites aboard. Zuckerberg blamed SpaceX. Musk wanted his displeasure to be known then and there but it was
one of those few occasions when he allowed his anger to fester like a sore. Years later, when he closed the Twitter deal, he slammed his fist on the table and let out “what could only be described as a battle cry”: “F**k Zuck!” Musk shouted, though nobody understood what the moment had to do with Musk’s rival.
In fact, everything about X has to be about him. Cut to 2023. Musk chose to leave the Super Bowl LVII in Glendale before its thrilling end. The former US president, Joe Biden, had made an innocuous post on X: “As your president, I’m not picking favourites… but as Jill Biden’s husband, fly Eagles, fly.” With less than a fourth of Musk’s followers, his post racked up 29 million views to the platform owner’s 8.4 million. It was enough for Musk to board his private jet, fly back to X headquarter in San Francisco, and demand an explanation from his engineers why Biden’s post gained more traction than his own. It would lead to a code tweak that forced Twitter’s ‘For You’ tab to largely gather posts from Musk’s account for some users.
When it comes to making business decisions, it has always been Musk soliciting advice from a small, inner circle of advisers who have little experience in running a business. Take the case of the monthly payment users make to have a verified blue checkmark, which was originally given for free to politicians and important personalities. Musk originally wanted to make it $100 per year but then he got into a rhetorical mood: “You know, like what do people pay for Starbucks? Like $8?” Before anyone could object, he set out his word in stone, posting: “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bulls***. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
Musk’s personal life is no better. The billionaire’s former girlfriend, the musician, Grimes, stayed in an Austin hospital in 2021 when a surrogate was about to give birth to their second child together. What Grimes didn’t know was that Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink employee who met Musk when she was a board member of OpenAI, the AI company he had cofounded, was pregnant with twins by in vitro fertilisation and Musk was the father. Readers find out that Zilis named her daughter, Valkyrie, a name that Grimes had in mind for her own daughter, born months later.
Just when you thought there is nothing new to learn about Elon Musk, along comes Character Limit, which makes for a fascinating read even for those who are not interested in technology or non-fiction. It’s an easy-to-read story about the thick-skinned, rhetoric-in-chief billionaire.
