• Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter must be complete by today as per a court order or face a trial with Twitter.
• Ahead of an official announcement Musk has assured advertisers Twitter will remain a safe space, we just aren’t sure for who.
• The yet-to-be social media CEO has fawned about how great advertising is and how it can be likened to content.

After trying to back out of his proposed acquisition of Twitter owing to there being too many bots on the platform, Elon Musk is set to become the owner of Twitter today.

As per Judge Kathleen McCormick’s ruling, Twitter and Musk must have finalised the acquisition by 17:00 today. That appears to be happening given Musk’s triumphant entrance into Twitter HQ, sink in hand, yesterday.

Now, the billionaire has published a statement speaking directly to advertisers. It’s important to remember that no matter who the owner is, Twitter relies heavily on advertising to generate revenue. In its second-quarter earnings call, Twitter reported that of its $1.18 billion in revenue, $1.08 billion was generated through advertising.

Keeping advertisers happy then is going to be priority.

So what did Musk tell advertisers? Well, aside from mentioning politics and the great oogie boogie man of the 2020s “the media”, Not all that much.

Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022

“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” writes Musk.

The billionaire says there is a danger that social media will splinter into far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers and that traditional media has fueled and created those polarised extremes.

Weird, we’d have thought the rampant misinformation from both sides was fueling hatred of the other side but we didn’t have a team of experts searching for bots so what do we know really?

But Musk then changes tack halfway through his note to advertisers saying actually the reason he bought Twitter is because he loves humanity.

“That is why I bought Twitter,” the billionaire says. “I didn’t do it because it would be easy. I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”

We’re not entirely sure how acquiring a social network is helping humanity.

Oh buzz off

As this statement is directed at advertisers, Musk spent much of it talking about how great advertising can be while also assuring advertisers that Twitter won’t become a lawless hellscape.

“In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature,” says Musk.

It also seems that even before becoming a social network CEO, Musk is assuming everybody loves advertising.

“I also believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you,” writes Musk.

“Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content,” he claimed.

Spoken like a CEO who has realised that if he wants to at least make his money back on this acquisition, he’s going to have to bow to advertiser demands. The idea that advertising can be content so long as it’s relevant is laughable. Are their good adverts? Yes, absolutely but the idea that people think of advertising as content is something we’d imagine a billionaire would say.

More importantly, is how Musk is going to balance making Twitter a warm and welcoming place with reports that he’s about to lift perma-bans doing the rounds.

It looks like the ink is drying on this Twitter deal though and after today, the future of the platform is very unclear and we do wonder what it will look like by this time next year.

Musk, of course, has plans to launch a super app called X but Twitter needs to keep making money in the interim and that means keeping advertisers happy.

the bird is freed

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022