“140 characters is too few”: when Elon Musk found Twitter boring

© Presse-citron/Unsplash/Roman Martyniuk/NORAD and USNORTHCOM Public Affairs (Public Domain)

Elon Musk’s early days with Twitter were complicated, to put it mildly. In the book Character Limit, New York Times journalists Ryan Mac and Kate Conger recount the entrepreneur’s discovery of the social network.

Elon Musk victim of identity theft

In 2010, his ex-wife Justine Musk encouraged him to sign up for the platform. A prospect that did not appeal to the leader, who was very skeptical about this new service. He also fell victim to an imposter using the @ElonMusk account. He ended up getting his hands on it again and published a tweet that could make you smile in 2024:

I'm not sure I can manage only 140-character posts. I'll think about it more carefully about Google+.

You read that right, Elon Musk does not appreciate this limitation at all, which has made the social network so successful. On the other hand, he is enthusiastic about the Google platform, which unfortunately has not stood the test of time.

Of course, things will gradually change, and the business leader will soon develop a taste for this social network. In 2011, he began to publish massively and on all the subjects that came to his mind.

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He thus becomes aware of the power of the platform as a means of communication. This place is indeed a way to speak directly about Tesla and SpaceX companies to its customers and investors without having to go through journalists or the traditional press.

A spectacular buyout

We know the rest, Elon Musk will finally buy Twitter in 2022 and profoundly change this social network to the point of renaming it X. His time at the head of the company is not a long quiet river.

While he aimed to transform this service into the ultimate platform like Tencent's WeChat, the company is facing great difficulties. Indeed, advertisers, scalded by the moderation deemed insufficient, have deserted X and the drop in revenue is massive. If you want to delve deeper into this topic, we invite you to reread our previous dedicated article here.

What to remember:

• Elon Musk didn't like Twitter at the beginning
• He particularly criticized the limited number of characters in publications
• He finally changed his mind completely when he realized the communication power of this platform

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