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

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

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.

LinkedIn Presents 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 Borman, and Jenna Goldman, and myself, Alex Cantrellwitz, let's rock and roll. All right, first of all, we're going to do quick. 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 applications are for the company now that Elon doesn't want to do this deal. Jenna, let's start with you. 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, D.C. Nice. Brandon? Yeah, I'm Brandon Borman. I ran Global Communications for Twitter from 2017 to 2020.

2021, actually. Sorry. Leslie. I was an engineering manager at Twitter from 2012 to 2015. Started the first safety and security product and engineering team.

Yeah. Alex. 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. Okay, amazing. So we have such a great crew here. We have NGCOM's 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, tens of billion dollars at stake. Alex, why don't we kick to you to begin with? I thought the board is 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 competing interests there and sort of what that will mean in terms of where we go from here? Yeah, I suppose this is a story of American capitalism as much as anything else. Boards of public companies have a fiduciary duty to their show. 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 $54.20 a share, which values Twitter at $44 billion, 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 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 months. It makes that deal look even better relative to when it was signed a couple 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, you know, what is he going to do with it, et cetera, et cetera.

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. I'd actually like to hear from the Twitter side. What is this going to 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 54-20. Because let's say they go ahead and say, all right, Elon, we're not going to do the deal. Can they now make a case, like, if they're sued by shareholders, that they can get to that 54-20, you know, number and actually shouldn't be sued for the damages?

No, I think I think that's their challenge right now, right? 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've 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 they 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 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 as for the business. Is there a way that Twitter can say we don't want this deal, Jenna, Leslie? I mean, 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 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 see this run its course and put the company in turmoil until we got a ruling?

Well, I mean, you ask 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. 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's a lot of feeling right now that the board wants 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. 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 months, Twitter held up better until very recently because of this offer that was out there. So 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.

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 of 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. Right.

And now we're starting to see the fallout from that. Leslie, knowing odd from you. Wow. Yes. I mean, that's just what I saw. So much I just came in and everybody said this. and I'm absorbing it all. The stock price, and I think the bottom is going to fall out the stock price if this drags out.

And so you could look at Twitter stock price hitting the teams, 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, 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. That's going to hit, you know, every sales. It's going to hit every aspect of the company, which is 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. you know, I mean, Elon Musk because of Tesla and SpaceX and the distraction that this is causing and Twitter because they will essentially not be able to execute any significant product to change or direction, you know, for the foreseeable future. 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 the product. So, so I just, I think that that, that, the sooner the better. 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 company and the best interest of the shareholders. I mean, I can totally get how, you know, some people may think that. There's also just this undercurrent of Jack Dorsey. And I'd like to know what, there's a big WTAF because this just doesn't make any sense.

It's like, I mean, Dorsey put, and, you know, people who work 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. 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 as long as we can tell from the SEC filings that he should go in and take the company private. now Elon's really, you know, created some havoc here. So anybody have an idea of what, you know, Jack is up to here? I mean, I don't think anybody can talk on Jack's behalf.

Right. He's Jack. But I think if you look at, and I think he, I worked with it most recently, everyone on his 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 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 threat on this when I was trying not to be completely negative about Elon taking over. I think 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 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 that would be necessary to make the technological changes. So 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 is something that Jack and a lot of people have agreed with for a long time. Yeah.

And the board might want to stick it. It's 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? 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 going to 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. 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. I think they have to, he's obviously not going to pay that, right? And if you force them to pay it, I think that's disastrous.

They can certainly get the court to force them to, but I don't know how you have a CEO of a company who doesn't want the company. Yeah. So I think they have to come to some sort of terms that everybody can agree to. 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 Ron Robben.

Jenna, your thoughts to do, 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, 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 this net worth to run the thing? I think I agree with the group here that doing this fast and, 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. So I think as swiftly as possible, if they can move this along, the better. You know, you ask 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 average. 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 said from the

beginning was that he doesn't believe that advertising is a valuable revenue stream. Maybe he would have gotten rid of it all together. Who knows? But on the flip side of that, there's a really big chance he would have opened the doors and allowed certain adverticles 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. So there's a lot to be said. 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. 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 or 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, bringing in the shareholder voice and then talk about what happens in terms of the legal process if this deal does not end at 5420 because someone's getting sued. Look, the board, the board's view and the shareholders view, I think, but 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, and I think the board can say this was the best financial outcome for the company and for shareholders and we've done our fiduciary duty. 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 $15 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. Based on what I know now, at least, of course, who knows? Maybe there's some hidden emails out there that say, you know, don't tell anybody, but 70% of our accounts are spam.

But assuming that doesn't exist, I think there's an argument there that the best maximizing shareholder value case is to sue and to force Elon to buy it for $44 billion. Now, 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 I do think the settlement would have to be one where the shareholders would say, okay, fine. You know, it was a billion plus X amount of billions more. I don't know what that number is. All right, Leslie, back to your knowing nod. Yeah, I think that all of this comes down to 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 uh you know people become unmotivated you know twitter just continues you know and it's infrastructure that needs to be updated and maintained and you know what what is that due to the actual value so twitter's actually losing value every day this goes on you know twitter's not gaining value because of the swatter'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 there is any, is any morale left at this point in time. 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 still, it wears on me. 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 that, I think, is keeping shareholder value right now. And I'm not on the board. I don't see all that, but I'm like, if I'm thinking it 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 people's ability to do their jobs. And it's hard to change that if it has gone on for some time. And this has gone on for some time. So I personally think it's dangerous time for Twitter. It sets up this really fascinating tension inside the company because you could have everybody who's been 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's saying, look, like Alex was saying, we've got to close this deal. We are here for the shareholders. It's a totally crazy situation. 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, the 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&A when he tweeted he would take test. 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 Solar City acquisition. So this idea that, like, Elon 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. Yeah, I mean, I would just add also, I think the real question a lot of us are still sort scratching our heads about is, is this really about bots? And if it was really about thoughts, 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-based bots or not.

Yeah. I want to take a quick break and then 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 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. Hey, everyone, let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news,

and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now.

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, 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. Yeah, look, I do think, I think there's a momentum to Twitter that is going to keep it going, right?

I just think it is that 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 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 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 and 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 to 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. Yeah. Can Parag Agarwal possibly stay in the position after this? Look, if Elon takes over, obviously he is gone. He's out.

If he doesn't, I think Parag has. has a bit of a hill to climb right now to convince the employees that he's the right leader for them. I think people really like him internally. I think he's a visionary 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. They're playing a very traditional M&A playbook, which is once the deal's announced, you just go quiet until 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. I would hope so too because there's a wired article out this week where they, I think, 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 job.

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 Parag should stay, I saw a big shake of your head, the negatory direction. So you want to share your thoughts on that? I think this is an opportunity for leaders to leave. It is totally an opportunity for leaders to lead. 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 to where he has to be quiet now

because they're in this really weird state. You know, what people are saying, you know, 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 sure that some people who may be on it are just like, ooh, this is really bad. 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 faced with something like this. And so the odds don't look good because no one and nothing prepares you for this. So I just, I mean, it's a hill he has to climb. I mean, I'll, I'll, I've just say, 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 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,

eat right, get a lot of sleep. You know, this is going to be, it's going to be a slog. It will be a slug. And I think what Brandon was saying was spot on. The company did seem to like be hitting its stride, his revenue was up 37% in 2021 compared to 2020 and 2020 was a good year. And we'll get to you, Alex. Oh, go ahead, Alex. Just because you 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? I mean, look, if you look at most of Twitter's history, I think it pinged between, like, are we Facebook? Are we Instagram? What are we trying? And I think they finally understood 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, it used to be if I was interested in movies, I had to figure out who were the individuals to follow to get that. allowing you now to follow topics really made Twitter suddenly an actually user-friendly product and so it allowed people to dive deeper into these subjects that they love.

And I think, you know, things like spaces, I don't have any insight to 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. And that's where they really seem to be investing in and building out the product. And I think you started to see positive outcomes from that. 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, 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 talking about

on every second of the news, yet, you know, on paper, it's minuscule 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 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. I think all that's right. I mean, I think you're right. I think it was less bigger who they were or 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. That's a good point. Yeah. Can anyone explain what co-tweets are?

Because that's what's come out of the product organization since Kavana left and I don't fully understand. That's the vision of the company moving forward. I can't explain it. I think it gives you the opportunity to tweet with somebody else, but that's not all I can tell you. Why out of everything shipping that? 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?

You can be owned by Elon? What's going on? What does that do for the ad team? 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. 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 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, 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 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 is the company stand for, what are my ads going to be near? How are people going to receive 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. Right. So this is going to hurt more, you know, even more than typical, this wild run of unpredictability. Though I do think there is some relief right now if there's at least a period here where Elon won't 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 that 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 breaks 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 a little bit because they've set the rules of the road and they can go into advertisers and say, no, everything we've been doing in the last several years, we're going to keep doing. Does anyone here think that, let's say, Elon is forced to make this deal at 540, that he can actually get a return on his investment? Like Alex, is there the 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 first day one after Elon steps in a CEO of Twitter 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 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, 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 general. reset and 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 subscription streaming. We're going to start from zero. But, you know, we want to. 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 they could point at in Disney Plus and of course now that's gone away in the past few months as Netflix the valuation has 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 you'd have to make real changes. Sure, I think it is possible. But I will say, kind of getting 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 case. 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 market day, 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 negotiate at a lower price. So that. his co-investors will be happy with the investment. 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? I don't think so. That's a better question for a lawyer. It depends on exactly how the

contracts are written. 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,

what we want out. Geez. Okay. I was laughing. Go ahead, Leslie. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm just too.

I was laughing because in late April, I was like, he's overpaying. Right. You know, Stevie Wonder could see that he was overpaying for Twitter. Twitter is not worth $54 a share. And that's a terrible analogy, but it's true. But let it go. Yeah. 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 separate pieces than it is as its whole. But that's still a long-term play. And that is where I would take, if I were going to do anything, 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, which is, yeah, yeah. And

And then you have your platform Twitter, which is your, you know, your open platform. And then maybe two of those are public entities and the other ones. I don't know. I'm not an expert at this. I'm just going to throw all that out there. But I just, I don't see how this is a $54, you know, dollar or a share company anytime the next year. Can we talk about the bots?

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. Two quick things to Leslie's thing. One is that, by the way, that's the Yahoo playbook, but sometimes people will refer. refer to Twitter as this sort of dying, floating Yahoo's company. That is what Apollo is 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 Leslie's point about, you could see 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 guy's 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. And so the money would kind of equal out of his money.

He shouldn't have signed that deal, though, if that was the case, he should have just said him buying more Twitter. It's never done it. But maybe that would have run a lot. Like, you need to sign it to insurer that he was in. You got to give it to Elon. He's really committed to the bit. He's committed. Okay.

Let's talk about the bots, then we'll run to a close. Let's do it quickly. Elon's contention is Twitter's more than 5%. 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 anyone here? Did anybody here see a whole host of bots inside Twitter that company never told anyone about? I think it's important to clarify, though.

Twitter doesn't say it's 5% box. It's 5% of monetizable active users, right? So that's a subset. I am 100% certain when Elon looks at his own account, he sees more than 5% box. 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 that may use. I think it is not straightforward and easy calculations to do. I think that's why Twitter said, look, 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. 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 of the lawyers have written about this. So basically viewing it as a smokescreen.

Yeah. So 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 bots and they've been lying to advertisers. 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, hey, listen, we gave you 10% bots on this one? Never.

Never once did that happen in my entire time at Twitter. And, you know, I don't have a ton of these. insight into the number of thoughts. 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 and

years, it's inactive. That's not how Twitter defines an inactive handle. People can log in all the time and consume content and never tweet themselves. 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. Yeah. I think the other think people misunderstand and think are bots all the time as they'll see thousands of accounts repeating the same line. I think, oh, well, those are all box. In many, many cases, it's actually just lots of people who are all connected to one another and sometimes they coordinate and

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 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. Isn't it amazing how people, go ahead. No one talks about what is a bot. That's the problem, right? It's like, what is a bot?

And I think what you brought up, Brandon, is accurate, is that there are people doing things that are extremely bot. And they're actually acting as a bot. They're just a real person. 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 Deca 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 Aides out of Russia, you know, or some actors acting on behalf of North Korea. There's a lot of things like that's going on that no one ever knows or talks about or sees,

and it's probably good. 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, if he's listening to this,

I just may have given him, you know, another out, hopefully not. But he's like, yes, I saw, you know, 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, 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 learned, has really shook his faith in his ability to do anything with the problem. 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. 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 and very soon after realized this is not a headache that I want. This is a $45 billion 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?

I don't think so. I think you can look at what he said about free speech. He clearly had no idea. 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. It was very clear he had no sense of what's saying, well, just follow the law in countries, what that actually meant.

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. I think you come to accept it. I mean, it's funny. And arguably the proof that Twitter is doing its job well is if you look at all the polling internally and externally on who thinks Twitter's biased against them, the extreme left and the extreme right believe the Twitter's biased against them in almost the exact same numbers. Which is amazing because they contribute to most of the conversation. And actually, Jonathan Hayd's going to be on next week.

We're going to talk a little bit about that, but it is pretty wild. I used to get DMs from very progressive individuals and very extreme MAGA. I guess they're now ultra MAGA for individuals. And the language was almost precisely the same. Yeah. And so in some ways, you could argue that actually shows that Twitter is being unbiased in the way they're applying their rules. Right. But, okay, we're running out of time.

I have one more question for you, Brandon, then I want to go around the horn here and see how it ends. What's still, Brandon, you were involved, obviously running communications at Twitter. What story should the company tell right now? I think the company needs to provide insight into where it's the business going. Like, what is the product going to focus on? What are they doubling down on? Like I said, I think they need, they did a great job in 2020 in their analyst's day 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 off, but just to give people a sense that this is a continuing proposition here, regardless of whether or not the Elon deal happens.

Right. And I think doing that works externally, but I think it's going to be critical internally to give employees something to rally around. 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 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. I think they're going to settle, and I think they're going to settle somewhere in the one to ten billion range. Leslie? I think they're going to settle. Probably, yeah. Probably like, I'll be able to settle. Probably, like, I'll like up at it. It's probably to be a little more like the three to seven range. Okay. And probably some sanctioning of Elon Musk

as well. They're going to, they're not going to let that go. They're going to 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 disrupt. This is the true Baker Mayfield and the Brown situation.

You're out and you're not playing quarterback for us even though Deshawn's suspended for a year. As a Browns fan, that really hurts I'll let you go. Congratulations on Jacoby Brissette for the next year. Sorry, go ahead. Look, they're going to settle, but I think the wild card is, you know, is any, is Eileen actually going to adhere to any settlement? Right. He's shown no willingness to actually believe the 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 going to follow through with it? I just don't know that this actually closes and this doesn't drag on for years more. Right. Alex, are you still confident that the Twitter has a good case 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 a chancery court jail at some point.

Yeah. So I mean, like I have no idea how this is going to end, but I'll do a half answer, which is I think we're going to court. I don't think this is going to settle anytime soon. 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. Or if we don't do that, there will be some outcome at that point. So that's my prediction, which is my prediction is we do not have a resolution. Okay. Despite what Ev Williams.

Yeah, something tells me Ev is again going to knock at what he wants, but you never know. I want to throw one thing out there. Because this is me just not being able to sleep one night. This is just a way for Jack to come in and take the company of private. Ooh. Well. Going to throw it out there? Stranger thing that happened.

Throw it out there at that last minute. And now I'm like, whoa. And join us next time on Big Technology Podcast. No, I'm kidding. At what price, right? That would be the question. At what price? Do you going to buy it for 5420 a share?

I suppose they've been lovely. I mean, Jack has been awfully quiet on Twitter. Yes. 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.

Also, he trashed all of the board members for the past several years. Well, obviously. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know what 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. Wouldn't he then again, right, there would be an activist didn't swear then at that point?

Because Elliot had this whole campaign about how he couldn't run to companies. Right. Yeah. 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 we'll 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 Gwattany 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 of what might happen 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 the Stern School of Business at NYU. He's written a new story call about, let's see, what is he for this title? Why the past 10 years

of American life has been uniquely stupid and he blamed 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.