What Happens To Twitter After All This? — With Three Ex-Twitter Employees and Two Reporters

Three former Twitter employees (Jenna Golden, Brandon Borrman, Leslie Miley) and CNBC media & tech reporter Alex Sherman join Big Technology Podcast for a breakdown of Twitter v. Musk. While at Twitter, Golden ran political ad sales, Borrman ran communications, and Miley ran an engineering team. We do our best to make sense of this wild story, looking at how far Twitter should take its lawsuit, what's happening inside the company as it goes through this episode, and how Twitter's balancing the needs of shareholders with its users. Stay tuned for the second half, where we predict the outcome of the case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Elon Musk is trying to pull out of the Twitter deal. And what the hell does that mean? We're going to do something we've never done here before on the Big Technology Podcast. We're going to break it down Royal Rumble-style with three former Twitter employees, people who made decisions at the company, rank fairly high. And so you're going to hear from them exactly what's going on inside the company. And then two reporters. So we've got Leslie Miley, Alex Sherman, Brandon Borrman, and Jenna Goldman, and myself, Alex Kantrowitz. Let's rock and roll. All right, first of all, we're going to do quick.

• 2:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Everybody's got a tweet link can sort of describe exactly what they did at Twitter or what they do reporting. And then we're going to get into exactly what the implications are for the company now that Elon doesn't want to do this deal. Jenna, let's start with you.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Jenna Golden. I worked at Twitter from February 2012 to July of 2017, and I ran the political advertising sales team based in Washington DC.

• 2:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nice. Brendan?

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, Brendan Borman. I ran global communications for Twitter from 2017 to 2020, 2021, actually. Sorry.

• 2:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wesley?

• 2:44Speaker 04

  I was an engineering manager at Twitter from 2012 to 2015, started the first Sapien Security product and engineering team.

• 2:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Alex?

• 2:56Speaker 05

  I cover media and technology for CNBC. I've been here for about four years. Before that, I was at Bloomberg, and I covered largely the tech media telecom M&A space.

• 3:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, amazing. So we have such a great crew here. We have EngComms politics represented on the Twitter side, two reporters here doing our best to understand exactly what the implications are legally, financially, and all the above. Why don't we start with this? You know, I've been thinking about this, you know, so Elon, of course, decided that he didn't want to go through with this deal that he signed. And I've been thinking about the implications in terms of where we go from here. Twitter is obviously going to try to sue and get that money, the 5420 that he promised. The stock right now is in the low 30s, so it's a pretty big gap there. $10 billion at stake. Alex, why don't we kick to you to begin with?

• 3:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  I thought the board was kind of on an island here where you have Elon doesn't want the deal to happen, and you have, you know, Twitter employees don't want the deal to happen, but the board wants it to happen, and so do shareholders. Can you talk a little bit about like the

• 4:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  the competing interests there and sort of what that will mean in terms of where we go from here?

• 4:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, I suppose this is a story of American capitalism as much as anything else. Um, boards of public companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize the value of their company. In this particular case, the board decided when it agreed to a deal with Elon Musk that his offer of fifty-four dollars and twenty cents a share, which values Twitter at forty-four billion dollars, was the uh, was the maximizing valuation offer that Twitter could get. In other words, no one else was going to top that bid. And also if Twitter remained a public company and sort of bobbed along in the markets, the

• 5:00Speaker 05

  board didn't see a clear path to gaining that valuation anytime soon. That was sort of the rationale. So that rationale is only even greater now that the valuation of a lot of peer tech and media stocks has fallen in the past couple of months. It looks, it makes that deal look even better, uh, relative to when it was signed a couple of months ago. So if anything, the Twitter board would be more dogmatic about ensuring that Elon Musk in fact pays the price he agreed to pay to. The implications of that, of course, are, well, if Elon Musk takes control of the company, uh, you know, what is he gonna do with it, et cetera, et cetera?

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Those questions are really not part of this determination from the board. Once they sell the company, whatever he decides to do with Twitter after that point, that's no longer the board's concern.

• 5:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  I, I'd actually like to hear from the Twitter side. What is this gonna do to the company internally? What's your understanding of like what's happening right now inside Twitter? And does, you know, is there a case to be made that, hey, listen, like, actually that, you know, that fifty-four, twenty, because let's say they, they go ahead and say, all right, Elon, um, we're not gonna do the deal. Can they now make a case, like if they're sued by shareholder, shareholders, that they can get, get to that fifty-four, twenty, uh, you know, number and actually shouldn't, shouldn't be sued for damages?

• 6:21Speaker 05

  No, I, I think, um,

• 6:25Speaker 03

  I think that's their challenge right now, right, is you, I think you have to look at this in the context of the Analyst Day that was done in 2021, where they kind of laid out a vision for the company, which was the first time they'd done that in several years. And I think now there's really a need for them to do something else like that, that clearly articulates what's the long-term plan for the product, for the revenue side of the business, especially now that you have new leadership on the product side. A big part of this, obviously, was Elon saying we should move away from doing advertising and have other revenue streams. And I think the board and a lot of investors think that's a long-term plan as well. So they should provide some more clarity into what that

• 7:08Speaker 03

  looks like going forward, regardless of whether or not this deal happens. I think they need to be in the public markets operating as if it may not occur, in which case they need to actually explain to people what the sort of go-forward plan is for the business.

• 7:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Is there a way that Twitter can say, we don't want this deal? Jenna, Wesley? I mean, where, where, where does this end? Because it seems like this might end up going towards a settlement. Elon can spend three years, you know, pushing this away. So, so is there a path for the board to say, okay, let's settle? Or is it just like, all right, well, you know, let's, let's see this run its course and put the company in turmoil until we get a ruling?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you asked the question of what could this do to the company? And I think the question is, what has this already done to the company? So the past few months as this has been going on, there has been an incredible amount of turmoil for the employees, for the shareholders, for the customers. There's been a lot that has been in flux. And as a result of that, it's damaging. While I'm no longer within the company, I know that there have been many people in the last few months that have left, not just specifically because of the potential for Elon Musk to take over the company, but because working at Twitter is always tumultuous.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Internally, it might be a really lovely place, but there are very few companies that are talked about in the press as often as Twitter. And to add additional layers to that these past few months has been a massive distraction. And I can't imagine that the teams feel like they can operate in a successful manner when they have no idea what's coming down the pike and leadership is telling them they can't really share a whole lot of information. So I think when you ask the question of is there a chance the board might say, forget it, let's just settle, I think there is a lot of feeling right now that the board wants

• 9:11Speaker 02

  to stick it to Elon Musk and make him pay the money that he put in the deal that he would pay should he choose to back out because this has been so problematic and so disruptive for the company.

• 9:24Speaker 05

  Alex, if I can just jump in on one thing Jenna said there, because it isolates the tension on what we're dealing with here. As distracting as all of this is for Twitter employees, the one area where it's theoretically beneficial is to investors in Twitter. If you look at peer companies, what has happened to them over the past couple of months, Twitter held up better until very recently because of this offer that was out there. So it sort of Twitter was being supported by this 5420 share price where, take a look at Snap, for instance, I mean, the bottom fell out on Snap.

• 10:07Speaker 05

  It's down 50% since even the deal, even the Twitter deal, I should say, was announced several months ago. So recently Twitter has kind of come back to the path with the other tech media comparison stocks as investors have started to feel like this deal may not happen. But up until that point, Musk's bid was actually supporting the Twitter price despite all of the internal nonsense and distraction that was going on.

• 10:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and now we're starting to see the fallout from that. Leslie, knowing not from you.

• 10:41Speaker 04

  Wow. Yes. I mean, that's just what I saw. So, so much. I just came in and everybody said it's an absorbing it all. Ah. The stock price, and I think the bottom is going to fall out the stock price. Right. If this drags out. And so you could look at, you know, Twitter stock price hitting the teens, um, which it has been at before, and there's really no reason for it not to be there. And that's going to have this huge impact. You know, not only external to the company, but internal because people, you know, the many people who've joined in the last year or two, when the stock price has been, uh, you know, two to three times that. I think, and that's going to hit morale and you're going to get people who can leave, will leave. And that's going to hit product development.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  That's going to hit, you know, every sales is going to hit every aspect of the company. Which is, uh, when we were speaking, I think on Friday, when I said, it's in everyone's best interest to close this as quickly as possible and to move on. Uh, you know, I mean, Elon Musk because of, of Tesla and, and, uh, and SpaceX and the distraction that this is causing and, and Twitter because they will essentially not be able to execute any significant product or change or direction, you know, for the foreseeable future. And, and in this market, they need to have a story and their story can't be, we're waiting for Elon. Their story needs to be, we're moving forward with, with the product. So, so I, I just,

• 12:08Speaker 04

  I think that, that the sooner the better. And if, and if the board does want to stick it to Elon and try to get him to do it, that may actually not be in the best interest of, of, of company, uh, and the best interest of the shareholders. Uh, I mean, I can, I can totally get how, you know, some people may think that.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  Uh, there, there's also just this undercurrent of Jack Dorsey. And I'd like to know what, there's a big W T A F. Because this just doesn't make any sense. It's like, I mean, Dorsey, Dorsey put, and you know, people who worked with Dorsey more recently than I do, maybe they know him better than I do. I was just like, I don't get this at all.

• 12:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, because he did, you know, lead the company for years and have a lot of people bought into his mission. And then appoint Parag, Dorsey did, and then kind of whisper in Elon Musk's ears, ears as long as we can tell from the SEC filings, that he should go in and take the company private. Now Elon's really created some havoc here. So, anybody have an idea of what, what, you know, Jack is up to here?

• 13:13Speaker 03

  I don't think anybody can talk on Jack's behalf.

• 13:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  He's, he's Jack. But I, I think, if you look at,

• 13:21Speaker 03

  I mean, I think he, I worked with him most recently, everyone on the panel, right? And I think he was very open in the last year he was there about what his ultimate vision for Twitter was, which was to ultimately make it the core technology and open protocol for anyone on the internet. And doing that is a very difficult thing to do when you're a public company, because it necessitates massive changes and, and public markets and investors aren't well-known for giving companies long runways to make significant changes. So I think Elon coming in and taking it private was for a lot of people. Look, I did a thread on this when I was trying not to be completely negative about Elon taking over.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  I think it was, a lot of people viewed it as, yeah, take it private, do the things that need to be done to shift Twitter into what it should be, which is not a advertising-driven social media platform. I, I don't think, you know, I think Elon said all the right things about that when it started and then quickly started chipping away at that and backing away from that vision, I think, as he started to understand that actually this was a lot of money. And at some point, he would want to bring it public again, which would probably be a shorter timeline than would be necessary to make the technological changes. So I, I don't know what Jack thinks about this, but I think fundamentally, the idea that Twitter should be a private company to do the things it needs to do

• 14:45Speaker 03

  is something that Jack and a lot of people have, have agreed with for a long time.

• 14:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and the board, you know, might want to stick it, is clearly trying to stick it to Elon. Leslie thinks they shouldn't be sticking it to Elon. Just settle the deal quickly and be done with it. Your thoughts, Brendan?

• 15:00Speaker 03

  I think the most, the two most likely outcomes here are either Elon offers them more than a billion dollars to let him walk away. Or the board and Elon reach a price that they compromise on. I think that the lawyers are largely negotiators right now, rather than getting the court to actually force him to buy it. I do agree with Leslie, the sooner that happens right now, the better. Because they're in this kind of weird never world right now, which isn't good for anybody.

• 15:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  And your view is basically, you know, don't push it as far as you can. Try to get that 5420 per share because that would just be a disaster.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  I think they have to, he's obviously not going to pay that, right?

• 15:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  And if you force him to pay it, I think that's disastrous.

• 15:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  He can be forced.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  They can certainly get the court to force him to, but I don't know how you have a CEO of a company who doesn't want the company.

• 15:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  But I think they have to come to some sort of terms that everybody can agree to.

• 15:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I want to go to Jenna and then to Alex. Jenna, and then we'll get to you, Leslie. This is great. We'll do round robin. Jenna, your thoughts? Is there a world where they should force, take it all the way, force Elon to pay that 5420? Or do you think it's worth, you know, getting out quickly? And what does Twitter look like if Elon is the sort of begrudging CEO of the company who is just forced to pay a large percentage of his net worth to run the thing?

• 16:20Speaker 02

  I think I agree with the group here that doing this fast and as quickly as possible is the most beneficial all around. I think the challenge becomes if the company decides to really put all of its efforts and resources towards legal action, it really comes at the expense of the employees. And we've all heard and seen rumblings of things tightening up internally at Twitter, people leaving, potentially even layoffs. There's a lot going on. And if all of this money is focused on legal action, it really pulls away from the company continuing to move forward and create products and be more successful.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  So I think as swiftly as possible, if they can move this along, the better. You know, you asked the question about what a Twitter looks like with a begrudging CEO and. Frankly, I don't know what it would look like with him as the CEO, whether begrudgingly or not. But I think from my perspective, as somebody who comes from the revenue side and specifically came from a really sticky part of the revenue side, which was political advertising, which no longer exists at Twitter and hasn't since late 2019, I think it brings up a lot of questions. He potentially could have done some really positive things on the revenue side and some really challenging things on the revenue side. One of the things Elon

• 17:44Speaker 02

  said from the beginning was that, you know, he doesn't believe that advertising is a valuable revenue stream. Maybe he would have gotten rid of it altogether, who knows? But on the flip side of that, there's a really big chance he would have opened the doors and allowed certain ad verticals to come back, like politics. And that would have been a really fascinating thing to see. While a lot of people have strong feelings about that and might not want to see it, when Twitter made the decision to get rid of advertising on the political front altogether, it did actually really hurt a lot of small advocacy groups, unknown political candidates, you know, movements that really wanted to make noise and attract people to fundraise and engage with their content. And so there's a lot to be said

• 18:29Speaker 02

  that's just a sort of narrow view of it from my background, but there's a lot to be said for if he came back, what things he might have changed, not just on the revenue side, but also on the product side.

• 18:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Alex, I want to, let me frame this to you. I'm getting roasted right now, and I think fairly so, for suggesting that the board is the only one that wants this to close. Obviously Elon doesn't want this to happen. The employees don't want this to happen. The board really wants this to happen. Now, the shareholders, of course, they want this thing to happen. There are lots of people that own Twitter at 30 something a share that are counting on this deal to close at 5420. So we've all talked about how it's probably better for Twitter, the company, to settle this close quickly. We've all talked about how it's better for Elon to settle this quickly. I'm curious what you think. Bring in the shareholder voice and then talk about what happens in terms of the legal

• 19:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  process if this deal does not end at 5420, because someone's getting sued.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  Look, the board, the board's view and the shareholders' view, I think, are the same, which is... As great as anyone may want this to go away as quickly as possible, and by the way, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams tweeted the exact same sentiment, that if you were on the board, he would be asking, how do we make this go away as quickly as possible? I frankly don't see a way the board can make this go away quickly, unless the settlement is huge. The settlement is very big, many billions on top of the one billion, then I think the board can say, we have, this was the best financial outcome for the company and for shareholders, and we've done our fiduciary duty.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  Uh, I do not think they can simply say, we'll take a billion and let you walk. I don't think they can knock the price down by fifteen dollars a share and say, you know, we got a new deal, because I think they have such a strong legal case, that if they were to take this all the way to the finish, they probably would win, I think. Uh, based on what I know now, at least, of course, who knows? I mean, maybe there's some hidden emails out there that say, uh, you know, don't tell anybody, but seventy percent of our accounts are spam. Um, but assuming that, assuming that it doesn't exist, I think, uh, there's, uh, there's an

• 20:53Speaker 05

  argument there, that, uh, the best maximizing shareholder value case is to sue and to force Elon to buy it for forty-four billion dollars. Now, there, there, I do feel like there's enough mitigating stuff around here, that there, at least you can say, look, we have some uncertainty on six different fronts, so settling is the best idea. But, but I do think the settlement would have to be one where the shareholders would say, okay, fine, you know, it was, it was a billion plus, I don't, X amount of billions more, I don't know what that number is.

• 21:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, Leslie, back to your knowing that.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that all of this comes down to how much, how much Twitter is not going to be worth if this drags out. This is, I mean, someone has to have that as a discussion. It's like if this goes on six months, people leave, you know, people become unmotivated, you know, Twitter just continues, you know, and it's infrastructure that needs to be updated and maintained. What, what does that do to the actual value? So Twitter's actually losing value every day this goes on. You know, Twitter's not gaining value because of this. Twitter's going to be losing value. It's going to be losing intellectual capital, right? And the people who work there, you know, the morale is already probably, I'm not even sure if

• 22:15Speaker 04

  there is any, is any morale left at this point in time. Though, though I do say this, most people at Twitter are probably used to the drama. I mean, if you've been there for a while, Twitter's been drama from day one. So they're probably used to it, but it's still, it wears on you. And after a couple of years of a pandemic and now this, you know, some of their friends being laid off, like the recruiting team, I just like the sooner the better. And, and that I think is, is keeping shareholder value right now. And, and I'm not on the board. I don't see all that. But I'm like, if I'm thinking as, as, as an operator in an organization, and I've run organizations of several hundred people, you can't let things like this exist out there for this long because it does degrade

• 22:58Speaker 04

  people's ability to do their jobs. And it's hard to, to change that if it has gone on for some time. And this has gone on for some time. So I think, I personally think it's dangerous time for Twitter.

• 23:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  It sets up this really fascinating tension inside the company because you could have everybody who's been, you know, influential in making Twitter what it is yelling at the board, get this done for the sake of everything we've built. And the board saying, look, Like Alex was saying, we got to close this deal. We are here for the shareholders. It's a totally crazy situation.

• 23:36Speaker 05

  And by the way, to Leslie's point about what is the value of Twitter without this deal? That number should exist within the Goldman Sachs, that Twitter is an own investment bank. They did their own modeling when they agreed to do the deal with Elon Musk. That would have been the reasoning that they said yes, because you have to remember Elon Musk had a track record with backing out of a deal or just sort of whimsically doing M and A. When tweeted, he would take Tesla private for $420 a share. And then that never happened and he was sued by the SEC. He had to step down as chairman at Tesla. I mean, the idea, also he had a lawsuit over his own SolarCity acquisition.

• 24:19Speaker 05

  So this idea that like Elon was, is a mercurial individual and dealmaker was out there when Twitter agreed to sell the company. So they don't have that to fall back on. What they do have to fall back on though, is that our hands were tied and we had to accept an offer of 5420 a share because our own internal analysis indicated that Twitter wouldn't trade anywhere near there if we didn't take this offer. And the board doesn't want to get sued and that's going to be the reason why I don't think this is going to end quickly.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I would just add also, I think the real question a lot of us are still sort of scratching our heads about is, is this really about bots? And if it was really about bots, then, you know, why wasn't that in the due diligence? And why did he sign the contract when he did? I mean, it's just, it really starts to beg the question of, was this just an ego play? Was this a play to, you know, grab as much power as possible, to make a lot of noise? Did he ever really want to own Twitter? And I know none of us have a window into Elon Musk's brain, but it feels like this is about something much larger than just, is 5% of Twitter's user base bots or not.

• 25:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I want to take a quick break and then we'll get we'll get to the bot question. We'll also talk philosophically a little bit about, you know, what Twitter will be after this. So I think we should, we should consider those broader questions when we come back after the break. We'll be back here on Big Technology Podcast with an amazing group of guests, Leslie Miley, Alex Sherman, Brandon Borman, and Jenna Golden, back right after the break. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and

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• 27:04Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 28:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast for a very special edition and Elon is breaking Twitter again edition with three Twitter vets, Leslie Miley, Brandon Borman, Jenna Golden, and two reporters, myself and Alex Sherman of CNBC. Brandon, what does Twitter look like after this? What's your best guess? I mean, and you know, it does seem, and Leslie's brought this up in the past, but like Twitter seems to always be operating in chaos and maybe it succeeds despite that. So, you know, maybe it doesn't change very much, the product and the company and all that stuff. But I'm curious if you think it continues to serve the same place in society as it has.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, look, I do think, I think there's a momentum to Twitter that is going to keep it going. I just think it is the people who use it regularly and consistently are too influential, play too big of a role, sort of forming broader opinions. I think TikTok's taking some of that when it comes to pop culture. But I think still, when it comes to politics and news and even sports, Twitter's still where the most dominant voices are. And I don't think that's going to change. I think all the people who are saying, I'm going to leave Twitter if Elon takes it, and you know, very few of them actually ended up leaving. I think in the short term, it's actually probably good for all of us that it doesn't look like Elon will have control of this prior to midterm elections because I think some of the things he was talking about were actually quite dangerous going

• 29:33Speaker 03

  into that situation. Over the long term, whether or not he's there, I do think, you know, what are the tragedies of this? It does feel like in the last couple of years, the company has actually finally figured out what it is, what it needs to be doing, and what it needed to focus on, and was making some progress there, both in terms of the policies, how it enacted those policies, even how it sold itself to advertisers. I think they finally had figured out what all of that was meant to be. So I'd hope that continues regardless of whether or not it's independent or Musk owns it. But I don't think it goes away. I just think the momentum behind it is too significant.

• 30:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Can Parag Agarwal possibly stay in the position after this?

• 30:17Speaker 03

  I look, if Elon takes over, obviously he is.

• 30:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's out.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  If he doesn't, I think Prag has a bit of a hill to climb right now to convince the employees that he's the right leader for them. I, I think people really like him internally. I think he's a visionary and, and he can be very engaging, but I do think there's a sense that not just him, but I think a lot of the management team is not kind of stepped into the void right now. And it's understandable, right? They're playing a very traditional M and A playbook, which is once the deal is announced, you just go quiet till everything's signed. Unfortunately, they're up against Elon, who has no rule books that apply to him. And so my hope now would be that as they go into this next phase, they start to operate differently and understand the role they've got to play in inspiring their employees to stay engaged.

• 31:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  I would hope so too, because there's a Wired article out this week where they, I think the headline, no, I know the headline is, as Elon Musk walks, Twitter workers says, Twitter workers say no one's in charge. And some of the quotes in here, someone wrote, Twitter is a shit show internally. I can confirm that for you right now without a doubt. Someone else said, there is no strong leadership at the moment. Someone said, I expect it's going to be a mess. I'd like to see someone hold Elon's feet to the fire because I think it sets a risky precedent to allow him to meddle so much, drive the stock down, then pull out. Leslie, when I was bringing up this question about what the future is for Twitter leadership, asking if Prag should stay, I saw a big shake of your head, the negatory direction. So you

• 31:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  want to share your thoughts on that?

• 31:54Speaker 04

  I, I think, I think this is an opportunity for leaders to leave. It is totally an opportunity for leaders to leave. Whether he can do that, I don't know him personally, so I don't know. And you're right, you know, he's at a point where he has to be quiet now because they're in this, this really weird state. You know, what people are saying extra, you know, to, you know, inside, externally, what people inside the company are saying externally, you know, is a small slice. You know, I'm not on their blind chat, so I don't know what they're saying there. But I'm, I'm sure that, that some people who may be on it are just like, ooh, this is really bad. You know, but once again, it's just a small slice. This is an opportunity for him to leave and he hasn't been in the role long enough to be

• 32:38Speaker 04

  faced with something like this. And so the odds don't look good because no one and nothing prepares you for this. Um, so, so I just, I mean, it's, it's, it's a hill he has to climb. I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll have to just say it's, and it's a big hill he's going to have to climb. And he may have to climb that hill alone. Because he may not have a lot of his senior staff with him. So, um, I, my, my, if I had to talk to him, I'd be like, get some good advice from people who've gone through this and good luck. You know, start in the gym, you know, get some cardio on, you know, eat right, get a lot of sleep. You know, this is, this is gonna be, it's gonna be a slog.

• 33:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  It will be a slog. And I think what Brandon was saying was spot on. The company did seem to like, be hitting its stride. Up, his revenue was up thirteen, uh, thirty-seven percent in twenty twenty-one compared to twenty twenty, and twenty twenty was a good year. And we'll get to you, Alex. And, oh.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  I just wanted, yeah. Just because it's, because you re-brought that up, Alex. Brandon, if you don't mind, can you explain a little bit more exactly about what you meant about Twitter figuring out what it is? Like, at least for the outsider like me, what is that that they didn't figure out before?

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, look, if you look at most of Twitter's history, I think a ping between like, are we, are we Facebook? Are we Instagram? What are we trying? And I think they finally understood. They, they are a conversation platform. People weren't going there to meet their best friends. They were going there to be informed. They were going there to do deep dives on subjects. I think one of the most transformational things they did with the product is if you sign up, you know, it used to be if I was interested in movies, I had to figure out who are the individuals to follow to get that. Allowing you now to follow topics really made Twitter suddenly an actually user-friendly product. Um, and so it allowed people to draw, dive deeper into these subjects that they love.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Um, and I think, you know, things like spaces, I, I don't have any insight into how successful that's been, but I do think you've seen it used, even in this case, right? You used really smartly. Where reporters open up conversations and have a thousand people join in, just to listen to experts talking about these things. I think they understood that they were sort of a platform for expertise and conversations around specific topics that you couldn't easily replicate on other services. Um, and, and I, that's where they really seemed to be investing in building out the product. And I think they, they, you started to see positive outcomes from that.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting you say that because I think Twitter's known who it was for a long time. I think back to like 2013 and 2014 when we would talk about it's the global town square, or we would talk to people about the idea that Facebook's a social graph, but Twitter's an interest graph. It's where you go to learn about your interests and not just interact with people you know. I don't think that was the issue. I think the issue was more, Twitter just never knew what to do with it. We knew what the value was in terms of having these incredibly high-powered users. I mean, we all know Twitter always has punched above its weight class in all categories. When you look at size of employee base, when you look at size of user base, and then you look at revenue, you know, Twitter is the one that everyone's

• 35:55Speaker 02

  talking about on every second of the news, yet, you know, on paper, it's miniscule compared to these other platforms. So I think the question was more, maybe we understood who we were as a company, but how did we funnel that in a way to be financially successful? And that's a question that I think everybody is still grappling with. And I know, you know, the product side, I've read a bunch recently, they've doubled down on trying to improve performance ads and direct response advertising. That's the fifth or sixth time we did that since I left Twitter. And I'm not sure anybody is going to be able to figure that out. I hope that they can. I wish nothing but the best

• 36:38Speaker 02

  for that team. But ultimately, that has just been a consistent area where Twitter has never been able to succeed. And that's just one piece of the revenue stream that we've not been able to figure out how to monetize.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  I think all, I think all that's right. I mean, I think you're right. I think it was, it was less figuring out who they were, more how to double down on it. I do think the advertising revenue side of it is, just fundamentally, it's not the right business model for what Twitter is. And a lot of that revenue improvement has come because they had a pretty low base to work from.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  That's a good point, yeah.

• 37:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can anyone explain what co-tweets are? Because... That's what's come out of the product organization since Caveon left and I don't fully understand. That's the, that's the vision of the company moving forward? I can't explain it.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  I can't. I think it gives you the opportunity to tweet with somebody else, but that's not all I can tell you.

• 37:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, why out of everything?

• 37:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Anyway, I'll leave the co-tweets alone. Jen, can Twitter still sell ads? I mean, in this moment, if you're going to an advertiser and you're like, hey, place some ads on Twitter, what's the advertiser going to want to talk about? Are you going to be owned by Elon? What's going on? What does it do for the ad team?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, I will say Twitter had and still has a stellar sales team and that team, that was me and my team and others that are still there, I give so much credit because so many people think it's an easy sales job because it's Twitter and it's a big name. And the truth is, you walk into a meeting and sure, can you get the meeting? Absolutely. But the revenue pool is still 80 to 90% going to Facebook with, you know, the rest of that percentage going to YouTube and maybe not even half of a percent going to Twitter. And I think it's a mix of things. It's a scale issue. Even for performance advertising,

• 38:40Speaker 02

  there's a limit to how far you can go. And then, of course, when it comes to what we just talked about, as it relates to performance and direct response, it's just not an area that Twitter excels in. So the answer is that the sales team can sell when it comes to very specific opportunities. If you've got a new movie coming out, you should buy a trend because it reaches everybody in the United States and it's an opportunity to really get out there from a brand perspective. You know, there are these certain examples where you can see the team can be successful. But ultimately, the questions are nonstop from ad agencies and advertisers about what's going on at the company, who's going to run the company, what does the company stand

• 39:24Speaker 02

  for, what are my ads going to be near, how are people going to perceive that, and it's just much more tumultuous than it is within other platforms where there is just consistent scale, consistent performance, and essentially everyone else is there too. So it feels like a safe space to be in, whereas there are less advertisers that are playing in the Twitter sandbox.

• 39:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, so this is going to hurt more, you know, even more than the typical, this wild run of unpredictability.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Though I do think there is some relief right now, that there's at least a period here where Elon will be in charge. Twitter had made a lot of headway on the revenue side because they had made significant improvements in safety and quality of content, and those were the things advertisers were really worried about. And I think the sales team and the safety team had done a tremendous job explaining to advertisers all the work they'd done. It was really very industry leading. I think there was a lot of concern that, well, wait, if Elon's going to make this a free-for-all and take the brakes off of everything, are we going to want to be anywhere near the content that's going to be appearing on this platform now? And so I think, you know, some of this uncertainty may actually help them

• 40:38Speaker 03

  a little bit, because they've set the rules of the road and they can go on to advertisers and say, look, no, everything we've been doing in the last several years, we're going to keep doing.

• 40:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Does anyone here think that, let's say Elon is forced to make this deal at 5420, that he can actually get a return on his investment? Like Alex, is there a best-case scenario here where Elon actually does change the business and makes his money back? Or what do you think happens to the business after the deal closes, if you're, in your opinion, because you do think it will close? Take us to that, you know, the day one after Elon steps in as CEO of Twitter.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  Sure. First of all, I have no idea if it will close or not. I'm just saying that I think the board is, has its hands tied, that they sort of need to push for close. Otherwise, I think they'll lose their jobs, because, and I'll get to your answer here, which is that I do see, I don't really see any feasible way that Twitter can trade at 5420 a share anytime soon, given where the market is now. That said, I mean...

• 41:39Speaker 05

  It's impossible, I think, to guess whether or not, or for how long it would take for Musk to make a return, because so much of any company's fate rests with the broader market. So if there's a general macroeconomic turnaround, then there will be a general reset in valuations across the board, particularly if, as a private company, Musk were to say, "Look, we're doing subscription now, and here's a growing business, and we're going to start from scratch." I mean, the parallel there would be what the legacy media companies did by moving to streaming. And they basically invented a new category. They said, "We're going to start

• 42:24Speaker 05

  subscription streaming. We're going to start from zero, but, you know, we want to be valued like Netflix." And for a while, there was an uptick in value. And you saw Disney get a real bounce from having a growth thing make a point at in Disney Plus. And of course, now that's gone away in the past few months as Netflix, the valuations come out of Netflix just as it's come out of so many other media and technology stocks. So if he hits it right, you know, I could see Musk being able to make a return by taking it private. He'd have to wait for the window, and he'd have to have a really compelling narrative, and he'd have to make real changes. Sure, I think it is possible. But I will say, kind of getting

• 43:07Speaker 05

  back to Jenna's question about like, well, what is really going on here? Again, don't know Elon personally, have not spoken to him. He hasn't told me what exactly is going on. But what I do know is he started to bring in other investors in this field. He opened it up, and a bunch of different individuals signed on to be co-investors, funds. At that point, is when I would imagine, he started to hear from others as the marketing, "Hey, you paid too much for this. Hey, we're not comfortable investing at this price. Hey, how do you get out of this? Hey, you may want to try to renegotiate for a lower price." So it is possible that all of this is just playbook for him to try to get Twitter to

• 43:52Speaker 05

  negotiate at a lower price, so that his co-investors will be happy with the investment.

• 43:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Alex, quickly on that, if the co-investors pull out, can Elon just throw his hands up in court and say, "I didn't get the money"?

• 44:04Speaker 05

  I don't think so. That's a better question for a lawyer. It depends on exactly how the contracts are written. Uh, but I have asked that question to lawyers and generally speaking, based on past precedent, if the contracts are written standardly, that is not an excuse. He's still on the hook for financing, even if his co-investors say, we want out.

• 44:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Geez, okay.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  I was, I was laughing.

• 44:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Go ahead, Leslie. Yeah.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  I was, I'm sorry. I'm just, I was laughing because in late April, I was like, he's overpaying. You know, Stevie Wonder could see that he was overpaying for Twitter. Twitter is not worth fifty-four dollars a share. And that's a terrible analogy, but it's true. And.

• 44:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  But let it go. Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  And, and, and I think that, you know, if you're going to try to extract value out of Twitter, I'd be like, come in, take it over, shore up everything and then start splitting it apart. I think Twitter is worth more as, as separate pieces than it is as a whole. Um, but that's still a long-term play and that, that is where I would take, if, if I were going to do anything and if, if he's forced to do it, like come in, shore up the business and then start breaking it apart. You have your public, you know, your advertising Twitter where, you know, people just do advertising and maybe have your public benefit corporation Twitter where, you know, you do that. And then, you know, you have your platform Twitter, which is, yeah, yeah. And then you have your platform Twitter, which is your, you know, your open platform.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Um, and then maybe two of those are public entities and the other one's not. I don't know. I'm not an expert at this. I'm just going to throw in all that out there. But I, I just, I don't see how this is a fifty-four, you know, dollar a share company anytime in the next year.

• 45:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can we talk about the bots? Um, oh, Alex, go ahead. Then we talk about, we have to talk about the bots or we're going to get crushed. So go ahead.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  Two, two quick things to Leslie's thing. One is that, by the way, that's the Yahoo playbook, but sometimes people refer to Twitter as this sort of dying floating Yahoo, uh, you know, Yahoo-esque company. That is what Apollo's trying to do with Yahoo's, make it different divisions, some of it private, some of it public, split it up. The other thing that we would be remiss to mention here, which is to, to Leslie's point about, you could see he overpaid at the time. Part of this, certainly the cynical approach to this, is that in the process of buying Twitter, Elon Musk was able to unload billions of dollars of Tesla stock. And he was able to do that potentially without ringing alarm bells, saying, hey, I think this is overvalued by doing it with this guise of, oh, I need the money to buy Twitter. So maybe that's also a part of it where he didn't care if he was overpaying. Because he knew he was cashing out on Twitter at a high value.

• 46:33Speaker 05

  And so the money would kind of equal out of his money.

• 46:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hey, he shouldn't have signed that deal, though. If that was the case, he should have just said, I'm buying more Twitter. It's never done.

• 46:40Speaker 05

  But, but, but maybe that would have run a lot, like, he needed to sign it to ensure that he was, you know.

• 46:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  You gotta give it to Elon. He's really committed to the bit.

• 46:48Speaker 05

  He's committed, right.

• 46:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, let's talk about the bots and then we'll run to our clothes. Let's do it quickly. Elon's contention is Twitter's more than 5% bots. But what he's bringing, what caused him to terminate the deal was that he said Twitter wasn't forthcoming enough about how many bots it has. Does this argument hold water with, with anyone here? Did anybody here see, like, a whole host of bots inside Twitter that company never told anyone about?

• 47:20Speaker 03

  I think it's important to clarify, though. It's Twitter doesn't say it's 5% bots.

• 47:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  It's 5% of monetizable active users, right?

• 47:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  So that's a subset. I have, I am 100% certain when Elon looks at his own account, he sees more than 5% bots. The question is, how many of those is Twitter counting as active users? And not pulling out of the MAU number? My own sense from being inside is that the 5% number is pretty solid based on the way they calculate it and the way they calculate MAUs. I think it is not straightforward and easy calculations to do. I think that's why Twitter said, look, you want to, you want it, we're going to give you everything. We're going to give you the entire fire hose of data. Go ahead and count everything that you want.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm confident that Twitter has provided him a ton of information to come to his own conclusions. I don't think the bot thing is a sufficient reason. I think most of the lawyers have written about this, so basically viewing it as a smokescreen.

• 48:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  So we'll, we'll see what happens. But I don't think there's going to be a sudden revelation that Twitter is actually 75% of their MAUs are, are bots. And they've been lying to advertisers in the SEC this entire time.

• 48:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, Jenna, since you were on the revenue side, how often was this an issue for advertisers? And do you have to go to them and be like? Uh, hey, listen, we gave you 10% bots on this one.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Never, never once did that happen in my entire time at Twitter. And, you know, I don't have a ton of insight into the number of bots. But I will say, and I am very confident that Twitter has given him all of the information that they have. But I do think it is important to know that it's hard to identify. I mean, this was a conversation that happened when this was going on. And I think there was some rumblings from internally where people would state that it's very hard to identify a bot. And I think that it is important for the public to understand, too. We would get questions all the time. Hey, can I snag this handle? No one's tweeted in years. It's inactive. That's not how Twitter defines an inactive handle. There are people can log in all the time and consume content and never tweet themselves.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  So there are all these factors that I think the public doesn't think about when they look at an account and assume that it's a bot or assume that it's not an active account. When in fact, there are a lot of things internally that that account might be doing and it might very well be a human that might look differently.

• 49:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  I think the other thing people misunderstand and think are bots all the time is they'll see thousands of accounts repeating the same line. And they think, oh, well, those are all bots. In many, many cases, it's actually just lots of people who are all connected to one another. And sometimes they coordinate in sharing that information. Sometimes they just see one of their friends tweeted, so I'm going to tweet it too. There's a lot of coordinated human behavior that happens on the account, on the, on the platform that at the surface level may look like bots. But as you dig into it, you find it actually, that's just a lot of human beings sitting behind these accounts.

• 50:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't it amazing how people, go ahead.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  No one talks about what is a bot.

• 50:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  That's the problem, right? It's like, what is a bot? And, and I think the, you know, what you brought up, Brendan, is, is, is accurate, is that there are people doing things that are extremely bot-like and they're actually acting as a bot. They're just a real person.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  I would say if there's anything that if this ever comes out, and I don't know if it will, Elon probably got, if he didn't get the fire hose, he got the deck of hose. But he probably got enough to see, because it's not just the bot to the 5%, it's all the other, for lack of a better word, buckery that happens on Twitter. And it's the tens of millions of accounts that are created each month that are bad actor accounts that are created by things like Internet Research Agency out of Russia, you know, or some actors acting on behalf of North Korea. There's a lot of things like that going on that no one ever knows or talks about or sees, and it's probably good.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  And I can see him getting that and saying, I don't want to touch this. I can actually understand that because I was part of that. I saw things that made me want to leave the building. So I think that if, you know, and if he's listening to this, I just may have given him another out. Hopefully not, but he's like, yes, I saw ISIS recruiting people on Twitter. You know, but yeah, I mean, but things like this happen, right? And you have to know this going in. And this is why I said, you know, running Twitter is not rocket science. It's harder. And I just don't think that he fundamentally understood that. And what he has learned, I'm positive what he's learned,

• 52:09Speaker 04

  has really shook his faith in his ability to do anything with the bot.

• 52:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's had a crash course really in the difficulties in running Twitter. I remember immediately after he agreed to the deal, some folks who were like doing messaging on behalf of the Chinese government were like immediately like, remove my label Elon. And now, of course, he has to do it because Tesla does big business in China. But then, do you want to run a service with that stuff, you know, being unlabeled? Maybe, but it's more complicated when it's international influence versus national.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, Leslie, you hit something that I think is a big part here, which is there's a really good chance that Elon was sort of moving quickly.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Very soon after realized, this is not a headache that I want. This is a forty-five billion dollar headache that needs to go away fast. And it's really easy. I mean, we've all been part of conversations and have listened to conversations about content moderation. And it's very easy to say how you do it from the outside. But once you start to look at it and unpack it and see how the sausage is made and try to figure out where to draw the lines. I'm not sure that's something that he was really all that interested in doing. I mean, again, I have no direct correlation with him or conversation to know that. But, you know, he likes to sort of sit at the top. Does he really want to get in the weeds and be the everyday CEO who's looking at content and deciding yes or no?

• 53:39Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  I think you can look, you can look at what he said about free speech. He clearly had no idea, like he has no idea what's actually legal in the United States. And he has no idea that if you follow the law in India, there are tens of thousands of accounts that would come off the service that day. Like he just, it was very clear he had no sense of what saying, we'll just follow the law in countries, what that actually meant.

• 54:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Folks who've worked at Twitter, I just want to ask you this. What is it like having everyone infer different motives in your actions depending on their political beliefs? So here's two responses to, you know, something I said today. One person said, the only ones who want this sale to close are liberal activists that use Twitter for propaganda. Twitter lied, which will come out in court. And then someone else wrote, actually, all the anti-Musk forces want this deal to close. And that includes all the Twitter employees that will take the money and leave the pompous ass holding the bag. And, you know, then of course there are people who are like Elon should be able to get out. So what is it like? I mean, basically, like, everything you do is always read in a political lens.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  I think you've come to accept it. I mean, it's funny, arguably, the proof that Twitter is doing its job well is if you look at all of the polling internally and externally on who thinks Twitter is biased against them. The extreme left and the extreme right believe that Twitter is biased against them in almost the exact same numbers.

• 55:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Which is amazing because they contribute to most of the conversation. Actually, Jonathan Haidt is going to be on next week. We're going to talk a little bit about that, but it is pretty wild.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  I used to get, I used to get DMs from very progressive individuals and very extreme MAGA. I guess they're now ultra MAGA individuals and they would, the language was almost precisely the same.

• 55:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  And so in some ways, you could argue that actually shows that Twitter is being unbiased in the way they're applying their rules.

• 55:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Okay, we're running out of time. I have one more question for you, Brandon, then I want to go around, around the horn here and see how it ends. What's, Brandon, you were involved, obviously, running communications at Twitter. What story should the company tell right now?

• 55:49Speaker 03

  I think the company needs to provide insight into where it is, the business going. Like, what is, what is the product going to focus on? What are they doubling down on? I, like I said, I think they need, they did a great job in 2020 in their analysts, explaining, here's the next five years of Twitter. I think people bought into it. That's when the stock went up to the highest spend forever. They need to revitalize that, not to drive the share price up, but just to give people a sense that this is a continuing proposition here, regardless of whether or not the Elon deal happens.

• 56:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  And I think doing that works externally, but I think it's going to be critical internally to give employees something to rally around.

• 56:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. It doesn't seem like there's any direction inside right now, at least from the reports that I read and the people I speak with. Okay, let's go quickly around the horn. What's the outcome that we can, not, not hope, but expect to see? I'm going to start with the folks who've worked at Twitter because you've heard, you know, where Alex thinks this is going, having heard that. Where do you think it's going? All right, Jenna, you go first.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  I think they're going to settle and I think they're going to settle somewhere in the one to 10 billion range.

• 56:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Leslie?

• 57:00Speaker 04

  I think they're going to settle. Um, probably, yeah, probably like, I'll like up it. It's probably going to be a little more like the three to seven range.

• 57:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 57:09Speaker 04

  And, and probably some sanctioning of Elon Musk as well. Um, they're gonna, they're, they're, they're not going to let that go. They're gonna be like, and you can't own and buy our stock for the next 30 years. I mean, just like something, because it's just, this has been so disruptive.

• 57:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is the true Baker Mayfield and the Brown situation. You're out and you're not playing quarterback for us, even though Deshaun's suspended for a year.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  As a Browns fan, that really hurts.

• 57:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sorry. Well, Brandon, I'll let you go. Congratulations on Jacoby Brissette for the next year. Sorry, go ahead.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  Thanks. Um, I look, they're, they're going to settle, but I think the wild card is, you know, is any, is Elon actually gonna adhere to any settlement?

• 57:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 57:49Speaker 03

  I mean, he's shown no willingness to actually believe that rules apply to him. So even if he says, sure, I'll pay you $10 billion or I'll buy it at 39 a share. Is he actually gonna follow through with it? I, I just don't know that this actually closes and this does drag on for, for years more.

• 58:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Alex, um, are you still confident that, um, the Twitter has a good case on, on, on Elon? And let's actually throw Brandon's idea to you. Do you think we're going to see Elon like sitting in, what is it? Matt Levine called it chancery court jail, um, at some point?

• 58:21Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah. So I mean, like, I have no idea how this is gonna end, but, but, but I'll give you a half answer, which is, I think we're going to court. I don't think this is gonna settle anytime soon. Uh, I think it may settle, but I think we will go to court first. The sides will kind of gauge where they're at. There will be some discovery and then we'll settle. That, that, that, or, or if we don't do that, there, there will be some outcome at that point, you know? So that, that's my prediction, which is, my prediction is we do not have a resolution.

• 58:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 58:55Speaker 05

  Despite what Ev Williams.

• 58:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Something tells me Ev is again, gonna not get what he wants, but, um, you never know.

• 59:01Speaker 04

  I, I wanna, I wanna throw one thing out there.

• 59:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  Because I, this is, this is me just not being able to sleep one night. I mean, what if this is just a way for Jack to come in and take the company private?

• 59:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ooh.

• 59:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well.

• 59:17Speaker 04

  Gonna throw it out there, stranger things happen.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Threw it out there at that last minute and now I'm like, whoa.

• 59:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thing. And join us next time on Big Technology Podcast. No, I'm kidding.

• 59:26Speaker 05

  At what price, right? That would be the question. At what price? Is he gonna buy it for $54.20 a share? I suppose they've been lovely.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  I mean, Jack has been awfully quiet on Twitter.

• 59:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  He has. Could he line up the money from, some money from Elon, some of his own wealth and some private financing and then take it over? I don't think it's impossible. But would anybody want to work for him after that? I mean, could you imagine? He's back. And by the way, the last two years of hell that you endured are come courtesy of the guy who's returned.

• 59:58Speaker 05

  Also, he trashed all of the board members for the past several years.

• 1:00:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, obviously.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I don't know what his, his real win in that is. You know, like, he's been there, done that multiple times. Does he really need to go through this circus in order to come back? I'm not sure.

• 1:00:18Speaker 05

  Wouldn't he then again, right, there would be an activist in Square then at that point? Because Elliot had this whole campaign about how good run two companies, but he might be running companies then.

• 1:00:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, look, one of the things that I've learned about the Twitter story is never rule anything out. You can't rule anything out because just when you think, okay, the man has signed a paper and will obviously do this deal, you end up in this situation and fun ensues. So that will do it for us here on the podcast. Thank you, Leslie. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Brandon. And thank you, Jenna. What a fun time. This was great. First time we've ever done anything like this. Big thanks to Nate Guatney for finding a way to master all this audio. Appreciate you, Nate, especially in this emergency situation. This was really a lot of fun, cool experiment, getting so many voices in. And I definitely am walking away more knowledgeable about the whole situation and what might happen

• 1:01:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  next. So thank you to our guests. Thanks to all of you for listening. Thank you to LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. We'll be back next week with Jonathan Haidt, who is a professor at Stern School of Business, NYU. He's Written a new story called about, uh, let's see, what is his first title? Why the past 10 years of American life has been uniquely stupid and he blames social media. So if you like this one, stick around for our conversation next week. All right, that will do it for us here and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

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