And what he wants to do - when he feels happiest is when he’s on the edge doing something dangerous and impossible.Īnd so if he spends all of his free cash on buying Twitter and then tries to do something dangerous and impossible and puts himself in a position where everyone is going to hate him, and he has this vague notion of free speech, something, something, that he probably got from a late night bull session with Peter Thiel 20 years ago - that is what makes them feel alive. He famously sold all of his properties because he didn’t really care about them. He doesn’t actually spend a lot of money on personal googaws. He is not the kind of billionaire who likes to just see the numbers on his bank account go up. When he first invested in Tesla, he basically put all of the money he had in the world, all of the money he made from selling PayPal into that. He always goes full-out, puts himself on the edge of the envelope as much as possible, tries to do things that everyone says is impossible. So I think Elon Musk is like the classic YOLO investor/entrepreneur. Why do you think he wants it? felix salmon So as of Monday, Twitter looks like it’s going to be sold to Elon Musk in a roughly $44 billion deal - a big deal for Twitter. As always, my email PLAYING]įelix Salmon, welcome to the show. So this is one of those conversations that went in directions I didn’t predict, which made it a real delight to have.
He’s co-host of the podcast, “Slate Money.” And someone who has thought a lot about the economics of attention, the way modern financial markets work, and the intersection of the two. So how does it change for him to be maybe the most important user of this platform to its owner? How does that change Twitter? How can he use Twitter to change maybe everything else? And what does all of this tell us? What light does it reflect on the value of attention today?įelix Salmon is a chief financial correspondent for Axios. Telling stories, keeping things where he wants them to be, being the center of it. Some of it just because he seems to using it. Some of it in service of his companies, and, arguably, his profits. And attention is what Twitter manages and trades in, particularly the attention of elites and really key industries.Įlon Musk is one of the most sophisticated users and channelers and focusers of attention in the world right now.
And thus, attention that becomes really valuable. The classic analysis of this is that when information becomes abundant, as it has become in our era, it is attention that becomes scarce. And I’ve been interested for a long time in the economics of attention and how they’re changing. What makes Twitter powerful is attention. So things that happened there end up affecting the whole world, whether or not the rest of the world wants to be there. It was, arguably, his main communication channel. I’d argue that Donald Trump rode his Twitter account to the presidency, and of course, used his Twitter account very aggressively throughout his presidency. But what happens there affects you anyway. You may not care about Twitter or use it. If the sale completes, the world’s richest person is going to own one of the most important communications platforms there is, a platform that shapes narratives in politics, in media, in finance, in technology, and so much more. Elon Musk is poised to buy Twitter in a roughly $44 billion deal. So I’m recording this Thursday, April 28. The Twitter bid is a power play in the attention economy. Transcript Elon Musk Might Break Twitter.