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Comment by petilon | Hacker News Reader

When you're the wealthiest person in the world you don't have to accept insults from anyone.

Twitter offered Musk a seat on its board. But six days later, CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that Musk "would not be joining the board after all" [1].

Musk's bid to buy the company quickly followed. And CEO Parag Agrawal has been fired.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/26/elon-musk...

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I suppose the big question is whether this makes Twitter more or less attractive to the audience at large.

Social media is extremely fickle and driven by mass migrations. All it takes is a few key players moving and the house of cards collapses.

I think Facebook is a textbook example, having once been the cool alternative to MySpace, which was the cool alternative to web 1.0 and Friendster, etc.

Right... running a social media company is different from running a rocket company or an electric car company. I wouldn't bet against Musk though. He has already adjusted his position on what is allowed on Twitter, now that he is running the company. Previously he said anything that is legal would be allowed but now he says Twitter won't be a "free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences"! [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728/phot...

Twitter is funny imo because it started as the microblogging service nobody wanted or understood ("nobody cares what you had for breakfast") but somehow got media traction to become an often quoted source for stuff. My perception was the chicken came before the egg, ie media pushed Twitter as a source when it was still irrelevant, and as a consequence it became relevant. So if it loses that media support, it's not immediately clear to me if it will become self sustaining because of its user base. Maybe. Or maybe they will go wherever mainstream media gives the most attention.

What's hard to understand about the media enjoying having a worldwide realtime info feed?

Agrawal is the big winner here, he managed to sell the company for an outrageous amount of money.

It's not Agrawal's company. He's a winner for how much he got in his golden parachute.

Unless Agrawal plans to retire, this success will make a difference for him regardless of the immediate payout.

I guess... Are there other flailing companies that capricious billionaires want buy on a whim and then try to weasel out of buying?

I guess he could have. a second act selling a shoe company to Kany West.

Already off to a questionable start then, making business decisions based on grudges.

It's not based on a grudge. It's based on previous conversations with Agrawal and him coming to the conclusion (along with Jack Dorsey) that Agrawal won't work with him to make the changes he wants to see.

https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1575598387335901190

'Changes he wants to see" like publicly declaring that the company/product is dying?

Jack Dorsey is trying to use Twitter as a foil to launch a crypto gimmick. Twitter's problems are largely Dorsey's fault so his opinion isn't reliable.

What was the insult?

He was disinvited from joining the board. (Personally, I think CEO Parag Agrawal had good reason for doing so, if you remember Musk's tweets from that time, regarding changes he wanted to see in Twitter.)

According to those messages found in discovery Musk wasn’t disinvited, he made that decision himself.

That's not what this story says: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/29/dorsey-wanted-musk-on-twitte...

News articles often make mistakes.

This is from Musk declaring he won't join the board, after reasonable feedback from Agrawal in support of Musk joining:

https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1575598387335901190

What's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you? Bobby 'Axe' Axelrod

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