Elon Musk Buys Twitter
With the news breaking on Monday that Elon Musk will buy Twitter for $44BN, making Twitter a privately owned company, the marketing world has been on edge. Musk vows to make the platform a paradigm for free speech, even reinstating former President Donald Trump, he may find that task a bit more challenging than he thinks. But putting that aside for a minute, Musk made some other comments about the platform and what it means for businesses, such as banning advertising on the platform completely.
Many users even claim to leave twitter, the same way that many Americans threatened to move to Canada if Donald Trump became president in 2017, and I’m actually curious to see the stats on how many actually did.
So what does that mean for businesses?
Initial Marketer reactions have been mixed. Some think Musk’s involvement will be the best thing Twitter has seen in years, and others are ready to move away from the platform now. Potential changes could affect the way brands function and do business on Twitter, especially with the possibility of banning advertising.
There is also a concern of the “free speech” element, and what that means for the credibility of content and how brands will handle that. While some brands, for example, those in the crypto space will tap into Musk’s cache and double down on their advertising efforts.
Musk has a history of radically disrupting industries, so why can’t he do the same for social media? If he’s able to bring his game-changing history to Twitter, everybody wins.
For brands and advertisers, it seems, many are holding their breath for what is to come with this deal.
What does this mean for ECommerce?
If brands are negatively affected, it can cause a ripple to lead generation and customer acquisition, especially if ads are banned. Overall paid media strategies will have to adapt, and reliance on other channels, especially owned channels such as email & SMS will increase. Time will tell.