After Elon Musk announced he was backing out of the Twitter deal, followed by Twitter suing Musk for “knowingly, intentionally, willfully and materially” breaching their agreement, many marketers are wondering, “What now?”
In the short term, nothing. Twitter should run as we’ve come to expect, with no major immediate changes. But in the longer term … we may expect (potentially) at least one significant upgrade.
One of Musk’s promises as the new head of Twitter was that he would “defeat the spam bots or die trying!” (exclamation point his). This has been an ongoing problem for Twitter. A substantial number of Twitter accounts are fake — as much as half, by some accounts — and that creates a real problem for advertisers. (Which explains, in part, why a lot of social media strategies place Twitter in a supporting role, getting only a small piece of a brand’s overall media budget.)
Even with the self-proclaimed bot warrior running for the exits, Twitter now has a serious issue with which to contend. The company has publicly acknowledged its problem with fake accounts, and Elon Musk, during the hype-driving phase of this deal, made it Twitter Priority #1. So, Twitter really has two options here:
- Wait out the news cycle and hope that it goes away.
- Or, address this problem head-on and solve it. (Finally.)
As always, we shall see.
As for the legal and market implications of the dissolving deal, check out the first segment of this piece — where professor Scott Galloway breaks down the very dire straights he believes Musk to be in:
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