Elon Musk Effect on Twitters Business and Brand Equity

 

Effect on Share Price, Twitter Business, Employees, CEO and Exec Team

• Elon Musk who leads Tesla and Space X announced buying Twitter for $44 Bn supported by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the crypto exchange  Binance, and Oracles CEO Larry Ellison. This helped the falling share price to rise again. 
• On July 10 he announces to pull out because of a lack of clarity on users (primarily bots) and financials and since then the price has fallen back to the same price of $33 when the deal was announced to acquire.
• Prior to this deal, the share price was in decline from early 2021.
• It is likely that it now goes into litigation and worst for Musk will be to pay $1Bn in the penalty, but it has a detrimental effect on Twitter's business, employees (morale), and more importantly, its brand equity will take a severe hit, resulting in further decline.
• Twitter CEO and his executive team will not survive this fiasco.

Top 4 Probable Digg Buyers

Rumours are hot again about Google/Microsoft planning to buy Digg. When I wrote about Top5 probable Digg buyers in 2006 it was a rumor, but this time reports coming out suggest that this time Kevin Rose might sell it, esp when the stock market is going down and the US is technically in recession. The only difference between now and then is, that one of the suggested 5 players, Yahoo itself is in trouble. So only 4 players remain in the race and these are :
1. News Corp
2. Time Warner
3. Microsoft
4. Google

I'm quoting from my previous post here with some modifications on why these 4 players are after Digg:

News Corporation - Newscorp would love to have this esp; after their acquisition myspace has lost traffic/users and momentum to Facebook. And as a media company it makes sense to have the most popular portal for news/technology/current affairs to be in their armour.

Microsoft - Microsoft will be the obvious choice because Microsoft is lagging in this Web 2.0 phenomenon. There hasn't been any decent/buzzing service offering by Microsoft in this space. If this comes on board, it will provide them a kick-start, which they are hoping for a while. Microsoft has got all the ingredients the to make this happen. Only problem i see is they are offering less money than what Google is offering and they are tied with Yahoo acquisition.

Time Warner - Time warner group which own Netscape will be other contender. Netscape has launched their portal on digg style but is not popular as digg is. Netscape previously asked top digg contributors to join and get paid for their contribution. Netscape would definitely like to acquire this.

Google - If nobody can buy digg than Google will definitely try. It will be more of a strategic move, to not to allow, Microsoft or News corp to buy this. Google can pull this off. Also Kevin Rose would love to be part of Google rather than Microsoft.

I can think of only these 4 contenders, what do you think? is there any other company (media) that might be interested in?

Top 5 Probable Digg Buyers

Rumours are hot about News Corp planning to buy Digg. It’s a rumour right now, how much truth is there, is anybody's guess. This can be real news and might have been leaked to the press as a part of the strategy as suggested by Internet Analyst, Henry Blodget,

Settle on basic deal terms and a provisional price, leak details so the market has a couple of days to chew on the idea, see how the stock reacts, and neutralize the market’s biggest concern (lawsuits) by announcing a distribution pact with the main guy who might sue you, fix the price, rubber-stamp the press release, and go.

The coming days will tell us how much truth is there. If News Corp cannot buy this then these might be probable buyers for Digg.

Microsoft - Microsoft will be the obvious choice because Microsoft is lagging in this Web 2.0 phenomenon. There hasn't been any decent/buzzing service offered by Microsoft in this space. If this comes on board, it will provide them with a kick-start, which they are hoping for a while. Microsoft has got all the ingredients to make this happen.

Yahoo - Yahoo's revenue is not increasing and is losing to Google on many fronts. If Yahoo can pull this off it will be their third prize catch after Flickr and del.icio.us. Both of these are brilliant applications. Digg will fit well into its service offering.

Time Warner - Time Warner group which owns Netscape will be another contender. Netscape has launched its portal on Digg style but is not popular as Digg is. Netscape recently asked top Digg contributors to join and get paid for their contributions. Netscape would definitely like to acquire this.

Google - If nobody can buy Digg then Google will definitely try. It will be more of a strategic move, not to allow Yahoo, Microsoft or News Corp to buy this. Google can pull this off.

I can think of only these 5 contenders, what do you think? is there any other company (media) that might be interested?