Two major Internet news from the United States grabbed the industry headlines today. One is that Tesla CEO Elon Musk completed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, officially entering the world’s most influential social media company, and it is reported that Within minutes of the deal closing, multiple Twitter executives were fired. According to people familiar with the matter, Twitter engineers were no longer able to make changes to the code, and Tesla engineers came in to check.
The other one is Zuckerberg’s death to the universe, and his fortune has evaporated by more than 11 billion US dollars in a single day. After the U.S. stock market closed on Wednesday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced a third quarterly report that was less than expected, with four consecutive quarters of declining profits and a halved net profit. It is expected that the investment loss in the Metaverse will increase significantly in the future, which has led to the company’s share price. It fell -24.56% on the day, breaking the $100 mark, hitting the lowest point since 2016.
In fact, Zuckerberg’s “head iron” metaverse has caused his net worth to fall out of the top ten of the rich list, but he is excusable in order to realize his lofty ideals, and maybe he will usher in huge benefits after the pain. But Musk’s takeover of Twitter may really make Xiao Zha restless. Because Musk has always claimed to make Twitter a super application (everything app), chatting, buying things, watching videos on it can do anything.
So far, there is no similar super app in the United States. If there is, it is that Facebook is more similar, so what Musk has to do is actually use Twitter to copy Facebook’s basic disk. Here, we are heading to the sea of stars in the Metaverse, and the old nest there is being copied. It is difficult for Zuckerberg not to have a headache.
The outside world generally believes that it is difficult for Musk to replicate WeChat in the United States (actually equal to the global market outside China). He also admits that this goal “may be wrong”, but the so-called “take it from the other and gain from it”, Even advancing in the wrong process is a huge threat to Facebook’s fundamental business. Facebook also thought about replicating WeChat-like products in the United States, but it didn’t work.
Fortunately, building a super app may not be Musk’s real idea or ultimate goal, but just a reasonable excuse for his acquisition of Twitter. If he wants to do a good job in the company, Musk should at least let the old and new backbones transition for a period of time in order not to affect the smooth operation of the company.
But he kicked people out of the Twitter headquarters building immediately, and froze and checked all the code, which was more of a declaration.
Due to the plummeting U.S. stock market, Musk’s assets have shrunk by more than 100 billion US dollars in the past year, but he still holds the position of the world’s richest man, and his current net worth is still 100 billion US dollars higher than the second-placed LV boss Bernard Arnault. Against the background of assets, it is difficult to say that Musk’s real purpose of acquiring Twitter is to build a super app. His dream is to immigrate to Mars and save mankind. Under such a vision, the value of controlling a super public opinion platform is far more important than making money.
Because Musk often makes erratic “monstering remarks”, the whole country is now speculating on which end of Musk’s political position belongs to the left, middle and right, and the answer has not been revealed so far.
In contrast, Zuckerberg has been firmly moving forward on the road of “political correctness”. Due to different management concepts, in the future, perhaps the war between Mark and Zuckerberg will not happen first in the business field, but in the business field. As two camps collide.
(The author is a senior observer of the Internet industry)