Twitter may not be a great business, but it can buy you power and influence.
Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us. Compared to other social media companies, Twitter is tiny. For years, investors have criticized it for failing to achieve its full potential. Twitter hasn’t been able to acquire billions of users like Facebook (which has over 11 times more daily active users) or to grow a mega advertising business like Google-owned YouTube (which had over five times more revenue than Twitter last quarter).
But Elon Musk’s $43 billion offer to buy Twitter on Thursday — whether it’s viable or not — shows how important and influential the company is, even when compared to its much larger rivals. There’s a good reason why Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, has already spent about $3 billion to buy the top stake in Twitter and is now spending his time and effort loudly proclaiming that he wants to entirely take over the company. Again, even if Musk is not planning to follow through with the deal, he’s still flexing his power and influence to pressure Twitter to run its business as he desires. The reason Twitter is valuable to Musk is, in essence, the same reason it’s valuable to politicians like former President Donald Trump, who for years pushed to say whatever he wanted on the platform without consequence, until he crossed the line so far that Twitter (and most other social platforms) permanently suspended him.
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Source: There are good reasons why Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter – Vox