The Musk-Twitter Deal Finally Closes

business strategy? Kanye's profile appears to be back? Is Donald Trump? Next? We have a premium lineup of guests today, including one of the investors with inside knowledge of Musque's plans, along with a member of Twitter's founding team. Let's get right to it with gloomberg. Ed Ludler, who's been following Musk and his coverage of Tesla and spaces for so many years and now Twitter. He joins us now outside Twitter headquarters, live in San Francisco. So at day one under Musk,

what happened? You know, not as much as we'd hope to be honest, And we know the deal closed last night. You know, Equity co investors were informed late night Eastern Time. What I'm hearing from sources actually a lot of the work we've already reported is ongoing. There are Tesla engineering staff inside of Twitter being buddied up or paired up with Twitter engineering staff, and they're basically having meetings to review the source code behind the Twitter platform. That's kind

of what's happening minute by minute. You would have seen the tweet right and from Elon Musk about Content Moderation Council, and so the conversation seems to be moving really quickly from how this deal happened and what the deal looked like to what does the future of Twitter as a platform look like under Elon Musk? And of course content moderation and the support of freedom of speech to freedom expression is fast becoming what we want to talk about now.

We know last night he fired a few of the key top executives Paraguagal, the CEO, Ned Siegel, the CFO Vidjigade, members of the legal team. We also saw people walking out of Twitter today with boxes. Are those all people getting fired? Yes? So, I mean on the executive departures. Sources tell us that for the time being, at least Elon Musk has installed himself as CEO of Twitter Private Twitter under him. I know that a lot of staff

were really concerned, for example, by Ned Siegel's departure. Right He was CFO for five years, regarded generally as a very nice guy. Um. Two individuals walked out of the building behind me earlier today. They claimed to be Twitter employees who had been laid off. It turns out, according to sources, that that was a hoax, or at least Twitter staff believe it was a hoax, that they were not Twitter employees and therefore not laid off. We phone Twitter.

We've asked Twitter for comment and to clarify the situation. We've asked Musk's team to clarify who those people were, and we've not heard back. All Right, Ed Ludlow outside Twitter headquarters. Thanks for your reporting, and we're going to get back to you a little bit later in the show. I do want to bring in Ross Gerber right now, president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki. He is an investor

in Tesla and SpaceX and now Musk's Twitter. So Ross, please clarify for us what's your role in the new Twitter under Elon Musk, especially given we've talked about this a few times this year, you weren't such a fan of Elon Musk owning Twitter after all. Yeah. Yeah, this has been an extremely painful and difficult process for the last six months, more so for Elon than me. Um, you know. So when it came down to it last week, they asked if we wanted to invest in, and I

said yes, because you know, I I stick. I stick with Elon. You know, He's made me a lot of money over the years, and I have great confidence in his leadership and an ability to turn Twitter around and make it a much better platform. But it was only after I heard the business plan that I was convinced that this was an incredible opportunity. And and that's why I'm backing it. And and I don't really have a

role at this time. I'm trying to get on the either the advisory board or the content moderation board in the sense of I think with my background and media and communications, and I actually studied free speech at the Anniberg School of Communications at Pen actually at the same time Ellen was studying at PENN as well. And being a liberal Jewish mostly democrat, I think that people would be very comforted to know that somebody like myself might

be involved with this type of decision making. So so I've made my pitch to them and we'll see what happens. So you've seen the business plan, you say, what's in it? What are Elon Musk's plans for this company to grow it, to make money, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, first of all, there's really two parts of the plan. There's Twitter one point and Twitter two point oh. And Twitter two point oh. I don't think Ellen is fully sure how that will look,

but but it will involve a much bigger vision. But Twitter one point oh is really fixing Twitter and making it a better platform, and it's around a three pronged approach. First, it's cleaning up the platform and creating some sort of verification system so users are really people, and that will make advertisers and users have a much better platform to share information and ideas than the current system where bots and you know, sort of attack robots go after everything

you tweet. So by knowing who the users are and creating this verification, I think the platform will be a much better place for users. Secondly, it's about creating a subscription model so that not all revenues derived from advertising, taking some of the power away from advertisers, uh and putting the power back into users. And this subscription will include many different factors including the verification and many other like small benefits like uh, maybe an edit feature kind

of like what Twitter blue is now. And then the third part is really about building the creator community. And this is a really a combination of like combining like some of the features of YouTube slash Zoom with what Patreon is doing, and and a company maybe like only Fans where where creators want to be compensated for putting

great content on platforms. And really YouTube is the best at doing this, so most of the other platforms um whether it be you know, commerce related like Instagram um or just information or entertainment related like TikTok, don't really have great monetization for creators. And that's really a focus of Ellon, which is getting great creators back on the platform and and a way for them to make a living.

So if they achieve all three of these things and getting a cut of transactions and the creator economy as well as subscription revue on top of the ad revenue, this becomes a much more interesting business. Let's talk about a content moderation council that he said he would form. He also said there wouldn't be any big decisions until that happens. It does look like Kanye West or Yea is back on the platform. Does this mean Donald Trump isn't coming back anytime soon, isn't coming back before the

midterm elections? Well, you know, I'm not sure where Elon stands with these issues other than he believes and I agree as well. And I have to say, there's nobody who hates Trump more than me. But I do believe in pre speech and I believe if he follows the guidelines of the platform, he should be allowed to speak, just like the Ayatola and Putin are tweeting as well.

You know, It's like we can't just arbitrarily decide. So I think having transparency through a process, having better algorithms to identify hate and bad speech, and holding everybody accountable to the same standards is really what melons about, and creating a great marketplace for ideas um and whether Trump violates those rules or not, he'll be held accountable to the same rules as everybody. Now, the reason you aren't excited about Ellen being involved in Twitter is because you

are a longtime Tesla investor, you're also in SpaceX. Are you concerned about Tesla? Are you concerned about SpaceX and his ability to keep these companies running and growing while he now has a third company that he has to take care of. Well, I'm not really that concern about Tesla, SpaceX and both companies achieving enormous successes and and have a very clear path and business plan in front of

him which Ellen is guiding. Um, My bigger concern was him being CEO of Twitter for any extended period of time, and that just there's only so much time in the day, and can you really achieve his goals at Twitter along with all his responsibilities of going to the moon and building the biggest, you know, ev tech company in the world.

So you know, how does one person do this? And and I think that's a legitimate concern, And that was the one concern I brought up in the conversation, is like how long is he really going to be CEO? But I think what he's done and all his company is very effectively is found great autonomous leaders that really can run the business when he's running around doing other stuff and he guides people in a very specific manner.

But I also think his engagement, obviously in different levels, will be limited because he had now had three businesses instead of two. Well what did he tell you, I mean, how long does he plan to be CEO? Well, I didn't speak to him directly about this. I spoke with his right hand person, Jared Burchnell, and um, you know, there were so most people deal with Elon really we just don't know, you know, like what will happen next, which is really the beauty and horror of dealing with Elon,

you know. So if you want stability, you know, this isn't the guy. But on the other hand, he's going to achieve great things. So so I'm not sure. And I think he's digging in now to see what kind of problem he's got to solve. And and as I've said earlier, Milon loves trying to solve the most difficult problems in the world and and this is definitely one of them. So so he's gonna have to put some time into this one. And just the same, I think

he's got the team in Tesla in place. Tesla has a great year in front of them, and I don't see that being affected in any way. So let's talk about the job cuts. I mean, I already you know much of the executive team is gone. He had said or there was reporting that he was going to fire of the workforce. Then he said he never said that. So where do you think he really stands on job cuts? And you know, how many jobs do you think should

be cut or should they be cut especially right away? Well, I know where he stands from what I was told, and he I was never told. In fact, I told the Washington Post myself that their number was incorrect and they didn't think the article that said, um, there will be massive job was what I was told. And and so you know, half the people on Twitter are probably gonna lose their jobs and and the other half probably

will not. And what the way to really look at it this way is that Ellen is hiring from Twitter this new team that will run Twitter and whatever it will become. And he's starting with the engineering talent. There's a lot of talent at Twitter, and he wants to retain and hire these people. And where we'll see most of the layoffs are at the top and in the project management side, where many of the projects have not come to fruition or not great ideas, and they're gonna

cut a lot of these projects. And so um, when you look at the job cuts that they've made already, Um, he's already saved himselves. You know, probably a hundred million dollars in compensation just from firing for very overpaid Twitter executives. So I have no love or um belief in the current management team of Twitter. And I think the first thing you do is you start from the top and

you start utting. Um. So that's actually good news for most of the people on Twitter, because if you're a productive, successful person on Twitter, you're gonna retain your job and you should not be worried in the least bit. You should be excited about the opportunity to work for one of the most incredible entrepreneurs of our time. So let's talk a little bit about Twitter two point oh as you call it. What does it look like further out? Is it part of this X the everything app thing?

Do some of Musk's other companies have a role. For example, starlink and Starlink have some sort of role in future Twitter. Well,

not necessarily. I think starlinking is an example of where they see Twitter two point oh because when they started SpaceX, Starlink wasn't even an idea, and Starlink ended up becoming this amazing project out of SpaceX really, and and that's where Twitter two point oh is, which was sort of like pitched as like, well, we're not really sure what it will invent, but we know it will be awesome.

And a lot of this will be the incorporate ration of cryptocurrencies and the digital ecosystem into the commerce, uh

and creator element of Twitter. So when you actually start thinking about trading digital goods and services and digital commerce like with cryptocurrencies, and you add in that element to Twitter as an overall platform for good services ideas entertainment um and such um, it becomes a little bit more of Elon's vision of X. And really, where I see this, which kind of hit me last night, is maybe he's building the future operating system for Tesla as well, for

all the screens and the millions and millions of cars that will now run on this new communication social platform. So there's a lot to this that people can put together between Tesla, Twitter software, building an operating mobile system, and building something that will be great for sharing ideas and commerce. Um boy, the potential is unlimited and that's why I am investing. All right, Ross garber CEO, President of gerber Kasaki. Great to have your inside perspective with us.

We'll be looking to you for more information on the inside track as this role is always happy to help, always happy to help. Thank you, all right, thank you, Okay, coming up. The deal is done, but Musk's court battles aren't over. We're going to talk to you about the looming legal challenges he still faces. Next. This is Bloomberg. Well.

After months spent in a brutal legal battle trying to get out of his forty four billion dollar proposal to buy Twitter, Elon, Musk still has outstanding matters in Delaware courts. He is scheduled to return before the same judge in Delaware Chancer Record in November for a separate trial over his complimence compensation at Tesla, which could top fifty billion dollars. For more on this, I want to bring in Lawrence Hammermash, executive director of the Institute for Law and Economics at

University of Pennsylvania's Carry Law School. Larry, thank you so much for joining us. So we're gonna talk about that, But let's talk about what just happened. Did Elon must just dodge a huge legal bullet here in closing this deal for Twitter. Yeah we'll never know, will we, But but it sure was looking ugly for him as the

as the trial approached. Um, quite apart from the fact that he uh avoided having his deposition taken in the case, he was going to have to deal with a lot of frankly, would seem like contradictory statements about Twitter in the last several months, And I for one didn't see a way for him to get to the goal line in that case, goal line as it was at the

time getting out of the deal. So as much as uh, his turn around and saying Yep, I'm gonna go ahead was a shock to me, uh, it kind of made sense because I think he was, as we used to say, cruising for a person. Do you think this will impact the tech m and a landscape going forward? You know, will this discourage potential breakups? Well? Uh, I'm not sure it'll do so any more than the law did before.

I mean, it's been pretty clear, uh from a number of cases in Delaware that when push comes to shove. If if your deal says you don't have a way out, the court's going to do something and is not afraid to make you go through with it the specific performance remedy that people talk about. So I'm not sure there's new law. I'm not sure there's new guidance, but maybe there's new reassurance that a deal is a deal and it's going to be enforced. So let's talk about these

other issues that he's facing. What how serious are these Tesla other Tesla situations and how significant is it that he's got to deal with the same judge who didn't make so many favorable rulings on the Twitter deal leading up to this. Well, Um, I don't want to puncture your balloon, but I think what's left in Delaware is not nearly as exciting or as big as as the case that we almost just had with with Twitter. But uh,

they're they're serious, and they're really two cases. H. One uh that's scheduled to go to trial soon is uh the one involving a compensation package Ellen got from Tesla back in a whole slug of stock options in in I think twelve tranches, uh, and they were performance based in other words, he didn't get the benefit of those options unless Tesla met some milestone performances, which they mostly did.

Uh and uh. And yet what there's what's left for trial is a stockholders suit claiming that that compensation, that equity compensation was just way excessive in you know, in the billions of dollars. I don't know what it's really worth, but it's worth a lot. So how could this potentially impact him given he just shelled out a lot of money to buy Twitter? Well, uh it Uh, if he loses, it could be significant. Although you know, even a couple of billion dollars is a lot less than than uh

forty four, but it would be significant if he lost. However, I think it's important to keep in mind that when the judge, who has since retired, decided a motion to dismiss the case, he said, Yeah, it's the plaintiff stockholder who's going to have to prove unfairness in this case. Uh, principally because of the stockholder approval of the pay package. Because the stockholder is gonna playing, the stockholder is going

to have to prove unfairness. Uh. You know, it's not a stubble laid down hand and in fact, uh the judge who decided the motion to dismiss said, you know, they pleaded adequate facts to get by emotion to dismiss and to go to trial, but only barely. So. He was kind of skeptical even at the outset that even if the case went to trial much would come out of it. And I haven't seen anything that's changed since then. To be honest, this strikes me as a case that would make a lot of sense to settle at a

much smaller level than a million dollars. All right, well, we will be looking out for that, among other things. Larry Hammerash, executive director of the Institute for Law and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Not all tech companies are taking a beating this earning season. Apple actually soared as much as eight point one percent in New York trade, closing up seven point six for its biggest one day gain since July. This thanks to its revenue and profit,

both topping analysts estimates. In spite of disappointing sales of iPhones and services. Has proved to be good enough news to avoid the fate of piers like Alphabet, Microsoft, even Meta, who've seen their valuation plunge by hundreds of billions of dollars this season, and Amazon couldn't escape the downward trend, with its market value dipping below one trillion dollars at one point. In closing the trading day at its lowest

since June fourteen. The e commerce giant projected the slowest holiday quarter growth in the company's history, while sales at its web services business missed estimates. And some other news In San Francisco, we want to keep you updated on how speaker Nancy Pelosi's office says husband Paul Pelosi has had successful skull fracture surgery. This after a man broke into Pelosi's home earlier today and attacked him with a hammer. The assailant confronted Paul Pelosi and shouted where is Nancy?

Where is Nancy, before striking him in the head and body. According to people familiar with the investigation, police say the man is now in custody and is being charged with attempted homicide and other crimes. As the world's richest person with corporate interests around the globe, Elon Musk is under close watch by regulators. Just today, a European Commissioner reacted to his acquisition of Twitter by saying the company needs

to play by the rules. Bloomberg Sarafier here with us now to discuss Sarah between his work with Starlink and Ukraine, Tesla's presence in China now of course owning Twitter a lot to keep tabs on walk us through the political impact of this acquisition. I think that this is gonna be one of the main things we end up talking about with Elon Musk, because this this platform, it's it's not so much UM a business problem. It does have

business problems, but the bigger problems are political ones. It's always about fighting in every country to not share data on dissidents or um not um take something down that a leader doesn't want to have up UM. And I think having a business like Tesla operating around the world UM gives world leader some leverage over Eason Musk that they didn't perhaps have over prior Twitter leaders. So I do think that that can be concerning long term UM.

What we're what we're seeing so far is that Musk is trying to take a sort of a measured approach to Twitter, maybe more measured than the thought that he would at least based on his tweets today, he says he wants to create a content moderation counsel to overview whether people the permanent bandage to be restored, even though previously he said that he doesn't believe in permanent bands. He's he sold advertisers that he wants to build Twitter

to be something good for humanity. UM that he doesn't want it to become, you know, a toxic success pool. So I think that he is is jumping into the deep end and getting initiated with this um really complicated political entity that is Twitter, which no one has really been able to run in a way that satisfies the public. Let's be honest. Do you think given that he just owns or runs so many different companies. You've got Tesla already under investigation. His tweet to take a private put

him under investigation. Will his ownership of Twitter with free speech in question, take regulatory scrutiny of him to a whole new level? You know what? It might? I think that it definitely. UM is interesting too if you think about the way that Elon Musk does business. He's he based on the text messages that leaked earlier this year in four documents. It's very personal, it's very direct to you. People message him and say, you know, I need this or I want this from you, or I have this idea,

and and he's responding on the fly. And just imagine, you know, when you're owning this network that has um millions of users, but a much bigger uh impact creator than even that, Um, what kinds of things people are already asking him for. He must just be overloaded right now. And regulators are are no exception to that. We've already seen the EU and UM, we've seen politicians around the world, you know, try to to bring Twitter CEOs up to testify in years past. I think they'll they'll bring up

Elon Musk as well, ask him about his content moderation plans. UM. Right now, he's he's in and favor, he says, you you know, wants in act. But I think that he's going to have to draw the line some somewhere, he's said, and that is going to anger some people. We just don't know which people yet. All right, Well, excellent reporting from you and your team are Bloomberg Tech editor Sarah Friar, which we will continue to watch in the days and

weeks ahead. Joining us now to continue this conversation. Jason Goldman, one of the founding members of Twitter, former White House Chief Digital Officer under President Obama from for as always the insider outsider perspective. Jason, you have been helping us make sense of this for the last several months. How

are you feeling now that the deal is done? Yeah, I don't know if we've arrived at actually a version of sense that you could you could write down, but we did arrive at least at a season finale, a conclusion of this particular chapter. The deal is done, and now we now we get to see what sort of eon is going to do with Twitter. So, you know, we've heard predictions of the death of Twitter. It's certainly the end of an era, But how much do you

think will actually change? So I think that for a long period of time people have been predicting the death of Twitter, and I think it's it's unfair to say that something is going to change today. There's going to be sort of a mass revolt, uh, and the product will die tomorrow. However, you know, there's a many different versions of death on the web. You know, my Space still exists, it's just not a cultural institution that matters

in the technological world or the cultural world. Um so it's going to take a long time, I think slower than people think for product changes to roll out onto the platform. But the problem is that mistakes can begin almost right away, whether that's you know, content moderation or

user safety or privacy. Even if it's not a conscious change in policy, mistakes will happen because there's going to be tremendous brain drain, you know, your guests at the top of the hour set up, and there's just gonna be organizational chaos that prevents good decisions from being made. So the leadership team is gone. We talked about that the workforce may go if ross Gerber is correct. Who were the winners and losers here, Well, you know, you

talked about the executives to go. I would definitely start by talking about the about Vigia, who's the you know, the chief legal person at the company ran policy for years. Uh, you know, Vigia was specifically targeted by Ellen in the wake of this deal as someone that he didn't like, his decisions, he didn't support, and then his legion of fans like baraged her with you know, racist and hateful content and through this enduring, you know, six months odyssey,

she completely kept the company on track. It was a game of brinksmanship in which she didn't blink. We know from back channel that he tried to renegotiate the deal. She kept the company on pace to close it at the price that was promised. And even when he was doing maneuvers such as you know, ironically posing as a national security threat, they kept driving the company forward to this close. Uh. And you know, I think that shows

tremendous resolve and as a tremendous victory, certainly for shareholders. Uh. And it's something that should be commend ended. Um. And of course, as we talked about before, the other winners certainly involved all the legal fees for outside counsel that they're going to be that we're generated from this. So congratulations,

congratulations to those folks in their Hampton's residences. You said, the best that Ellen could do here was to remove himself from all decision making, and now he's the CEO for the foreseeable future. So what's the best thing he could do now? So I think, like you know, the the idea, the thing of announcing there's going to be a content moderation panel is actually a smart move. He's saying, look, I don't stop dm ng me and sending me all of your you know, sad requests about how you don't

have as many followers as you think you should. I don't want to answer all of those requests. We're going to form a panel and figure that out. The problem is is how much do we really believe that this is a serious idea. First of all, Twitter already has an external Trust and Safety council that they can go to for for first questions and support, So I guess he's just layering that one beneath another committee, which is

a classic corporate move. So a um. But then also this morning, as as recently as seven hours ago, he was replying to someone named you know whose name is is a is a version of cat excrement on Twitter about what problems they were having with their follower graph and saying he was going to look into it. It just seems unlikely that he's going to be able to constrain himself, uh and keep himself out of of participating

in these kind of decisions. And we know that he just likes to announce things and say that things are coming, and that there's gonna be a super app, and the there's gonna be digital payments, all the stuff that Ross ended up believing in UM. I just don't think that's going to stop, and that he'll end up sort of announcing these things that don't ultimately come to fruition. What are your biggest fears and how likely do you think

your biggest fears will be realized? So I think the stuff that Sarah was talking about is the is the biggest concern because he now exists in a world in which the Chinese Communist Party has tremendous leverage over him because he's building the giga factory in China. The business in China is incredibly important to Tesla's bottom line. Tesla

is the source of his wealth. If China and the CCP want to have information on dissidents in Taiwan and Hong Kong, he's going to have a much harder time resisting those demands than any other social media company, any other Internet company before, because they simply didn't exist in these markets. Twitter didn't exist in China, Facebook didn't exist in China. Like that, they didn't have the same exposure. And Ellen not only has exposure in terms of business.

He has real on the ground assets that are at risk not only in China but in other authoritarian regimes around the world. Visual is one of the people that was sort of keeping the line there and protecting users around the world, and those kind of mistakes are really possible and really can happen. Uh And and that's where we're talking about. You know, we like to have fun with is this the death of Twitter and what's going on, but there's actual, real user safety and user health issues

that are going to be at risk here. The other thing that's happening that we know is an increase in hate speech, is an increase uh in you know, defamatory languag on the site, which has always been a problem for Twitter. But we see an increase in that already because people sort of sense that there's a bat signal out that says it's okay to act this way on Twitter now because Ellen's espoused this free speech viewpoint, and that's going to be difficult for people whore at risk

on Twitter. But it's also going to be difficult for his business interests because advertisers simply don't want to be in a place that looks like a cess pit now. People are already being reinstated, Kanye West, for example. You know, Ellen has said no big decisions will be made until this Content Moderation Council is formed. How soon do you think Donald Trump is reinstated on the platform? Is he reinstated, does it happen before the mid terms? Does it affect

the mid terms? I don't think it. I don't think it affects the mid terms. I think he will end up doing it outside of the council's decision. I think it would just be something he does because of you know, some whim or some reason. I don't think the council is a super serious thing at this point. Like you know, I think he will continue to preserve his prerogative to make decisions like that as he sees fit. But I also think that the reinstatement of Donald Trump isn't the

most important issue. Like like we it's easy to focus on that because it's a big topic and it's something that gets outside attention, particularly from you know, folks with my background working in politics. But the type of user safety issues and the type of user harassment issues that happen all the time really happened in the eaches, and not in like that kind of big that kind of

big moment. They happen with complaints between users, people feeling threatened, people's personal information being revealed, and the kind of decisions that folks are going to have to make it the company, and now they're going to have to do it without senior leadership and presumably without with much fewer resources than they had previously. And again, I think that's not only bad for the world, I think that's what's going to

hurt his business prospects here. I think he's going to be in a situation where he's losing two billion dollars a year on interest payments on the debt, as well as costs and running the company. And it's only going to create a downward spiral because he's created a place that just looks abandoned and neglected. So it's the clock to sting. Then, I mean, how long do you think

he keeps he holds onto Twitter four. I think he eventually relinquished it with like my I don't know how long, But I don't think you know he's he's obviously very rich, less rich than he was before he started all this nonsense. But I think he will eventually get tired of spending billions of dollars a year out of pocket to service interest at that is, half of which have floating rate. Uh. That's going to end up moving off of Morgen Sandley's

books to some kind of you know, distressed that fund. Uh, he's going to have to continue to service that that as well as paying to do all these wonderful things that were talked about. And imagine at the top of the hour, you don't just get to create an only fans out of Twitter or YouTube out of Twitter. Imagine digital payments out of Twitter. By bringing in a bunch of Tesla engineers to review the code, that takes a tremendous amount of energy and a tremendous amount of resources

to actually pull off. You know, there's been ridiculous predictions about how quickly Ellen can change the course on this. If you remember some of the all In guys were talking about in April when the deals announced that with just a few test engineers, Ellen could remove the spam problem from Twitter over the weekend. Well, you know they were on site yesterday. We'll give them the three day weekend.

We'll see if spam is still around on Monday. I'm going to guess that it is, like it's not actually easy to change these the trajectory of these things, and the company moreover is going to go through this completely chaotic transition where it's essentially learning how to operate from day one. Except it's already a going concern with thousands of employees. It's it's just not going to end well for him in this particular scenario. Last quick question, Jason,

are you going to keep tweeting? Oh? Of course, yeah, you I will send the last tweet if need be. I am not I am not leaving the site. Um. But again, I exist in a very privileged space on the site, like I don't get messed with by you know, by by these these ellen stands. The only time where I see trolls and hate, which I did see some today, is when I get retweeted by a woman tech reporter specifically that because then all that attracts all of these all of these folks on the platform. But yeah, I'm

gonna keep tweeting. I think that there will always be a place for tweets in the world. In some way, I just think it's going to be a much diminished place as a female journalist who covers tech. I appreciate that answer. Jason Coleman, uh founding team member at Twitter for more, White House chief Digital Officer, thank you so much for your helping us try to make sense of this journey over the last year. Joe's Coin, the cryptocurrency based on a meme of a shiba inu, is soaring

after Musk's acquisition of Twitter. The coin, which can be used to buy testless swag, is up in the last week. That is fitting for a cryptocurrency that was pumped up by many in the blockchain community, which of course thrives on Twitter. Bloomer Shinali Bossik here to explain. You know, this is a good question, Shali. Would crypto be so disruptive if it weren't for Twitter and crypto Twitter? Yeah, and look at the price action alone in the days

moving up to this deal closure. Here you do have Chi up almost twenty over seven day period, ten percent over twenty four hour period. It's getting back down a little bit now it's essentially flat, but you've seen the most of the games. You also see doge point at almost forty percent over a seven day periods of even bigger rise there. But to your point, would it be

disruptive without Twitter? It's a huge place of discourse of course when it comes to cryptocurrencies and communities around cryptocurrencies. But think about how much social media itself on other platforms also have helped really fuel certain tokens and the discourse around them. Everything from TikTok to read It of course has played a huge role as well as Um

as well as Discord. I would add Discord to that list of course too, although there are a lot of questions about the direction Discord is going to in terms of building crypto communities. But Emily, I think what's interesting here is not just you know, the crypto community a rallying around Elon Musk or even certain coins itself, but what happens to crypto from here and where where does it go in terms of how it fits into the

broader crypto sorry, broader Twitter environment. What can Elon Musk do to make Twitter more crypto friendly since we know how much she seems to love it. Yeah, I think what's important here is it's not really just about the discourse. A lot of this here. Remember Twitter really leaned into crypto under Jack Dorsey, and then late last year and early this year they really really focused on using the Lightning network and Strike to be tipping users over the

Lightning network. Now, remember Elon Musk. It's really interesting to think about what this means in terms of either what it means for a super app, but he also came from the PayPal mafia. Here. We know he's friendly when it comes to cryptocurrencies as a whole. We know that he's very steeped in the payments world as well. Can Twitter really be a more significant means of saying sending payments cross border? And is that a priority? It's something we haven't seen a whole lot of movement on since

the initial announcements. And where does it fall in the grand span of his plans here when content moderation and other things for Twitter are a more immediate concerns. Indeed, lots of looming questions. Shali bass As always, thank you, have a good weekend. Up next, we're gonna go back to Twitter headquarters where Ed Ludlow has been standing by. What's the latest in the last hour? He will tell

us this is Gloomberg. Let's get back to Bloomer. Sad Ludlow who's been at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco all day. No elon sightings right add to this point, no no elon sidings. All I know that's going on in the building behind me is that senior engineers within Twitter's product teams have been summoned to meetings, and in those meetings

there are other Tesla engineers. Some of the meeting appointments did have Elon Mosque listed as a participant, and they've they actually been asked to bring print outs paper, physical paper of the last thirty days of the source code they've worked on for Twitter. And my understanding, the whole point of this exercise is to help under Musk understand how Twitter works, the platform, how the underlying code actually works for Twitter as we know it. Ellen has been tweeting.

He's been making what looked to be jokes, but you know, in typical Ellen fashion, tweeting things that are you know, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. Yeah, difficult separate fact from fiction. What we know is individuals came outside of Twitter's headquarters behind me. They posed as Twitter employees and claimed that they've been laid off sources inside Twitter, and you know, images share with me of discussions on internal Slack channels, said that this was a hoax. These

are not Twitter employees. We put multiple requests for comment into Elon Musk and his teams. We've put multiple requests for comment into Twitter, and as his standard with Elon Musk, there was no comment forthcoming. But he did tweet a meme, and this is often the case he resorted to to

sort of meme and ridicule. You know, we talked to Russ Gerber earlier in the shows, one of the investors in Twitter under Elon Musk, even though he didn't love the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter at all, because he's an investor in Tesla, in SpaceX, and he said, you know, part of you know, supporting Elon is knowing you are in for an unpredictable ride and and you know you just have to accept that. You just don't

know how this is going to end. You know, for those who are sticking around, why are they sticking around and what are they preparing for? Yeah, because Ellen has a good track record of products improvement and innovation. Look at what SpaceX has done to change the commercial space industry. Lots of Twitter insiders I've spoken to are excited by the prospect of the company being owned by Elon Musk.

The difficulty is that the uncertainty outweighs what they know about the changes that are coming for the products and the company. The threat of layoffs is real, and a lot of folks inside Twitter that work in that building and have done for many years are worried for their livelihoods. So, you know, I think a lot of changes to come in the next couple of days. Right now, the focus, I'm told by sources is Elon Musk under trying to understand how the Twitter platform and the code that underwrites

all of it really works. Rosco were also said he thinks the number of layoffs will be more like rather than seventy five quickly. Do we have any confirmation on that? Know all I can tell you. According to sources earlier this week, Mosque denied two staff that were gathered that he knew where that seventy layoff figure came from. Yeah, all right, mort come at Ludlow outside of Twitter headquarters. We're going to keep on this story, of course, in the days and weeks ahead. And that does it for

the sedition of Bloomberg Technology Monday. We've got Pinterest CEO Bill Ready, Pinterest way up today on the back of their results. We'll ask him why. Mrs Bloomberg