Twitter deal temporarily on hold, announces Tesla CEO Elon Musk
The Tesla CEO stated that the transaction has been put on hold seeking facts confirming the assessment that spam/fake accounts constitute fewer than 5% of users.
FollowTesla CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that his $44 billion purchase for Twitter Inc was on hold for the time being due to pending information on spam and fraudulent accounts. "Twitter agreement on hold temporarily seeking information supporting computation that spam/fake accounts do indeed comprise fewer than 5% of users," Musk wrote in a tweet. The Tesla CEO stated that the transaction has been put on hold seeking facts confirming the assessment that spam/fake accounts constitute fewer than 5% of users.
In premarket trade, shares of the social networking business plummeted 20%. Twitter did not reply quickly to a request for comment.
Following Musk's statement that the Twitter transaction would be postponed, shares of the microblogging site fell 11% pre-market, while Tesla stock rose as high as 4.9 percent. Earlier this month, the business calculated that fraudulent or spam accounts accounted for less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.
Also Read |Â Twitter likely to charge slight fee for commercial, government users, says Elon Musk
It also stated that until the transaction with Musk is finalised, it faces various risks, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter. Musk, the world's richest man and CEO of Tesla Inc, had stated that one of his top goals would be to eliminate "spam bots" from the site.
Earlier, Musk said Twitter would always be free for casual users but may charge a small fee for business and government users, as the billionaire entrepreneur attempts to expand the social media platform's reach from 'niche' to most Americans.
"Twitter will always be free for casual users, but there may be a small fee for commercial/government users," Musk wrote in a tweet.
Even before striking an agreement with Twitter, Musk proposed a few improvements to the Twitter Blue premium membership service, including lowering the price. Musk claimed at the annual Met Gala in New York on Monday that he would make Twitter open about how tweets are promoted or demoted, and that his company's algorithms will be publicly available for criticism.
Also Read:Â Nearly half of Elon Musk's 90 million Twitter followers are fake, claims online toolÂ
