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Elon Musk Confirms Acquisition Of Twitter For $44 Billion.

Elon Musk, a billionaire, has taken control of Twitter in one of the biggest tech deals in history. Elon Musk will pay approximately $44 billion for the social network, with shares valued at $54.20. On April 14, Musk announced his takeover bid, calling it his ‘best and final offer.’

Free Speech

“Free speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where important issues affecting humanity’s future are discussed.” I also want to make Twitter better than it has ever been by adding new features, opening up the algorithms to increase trust, defeating spambots, and authenticating all humans. “I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock Twitter’s tremendous potential,” Elon Musk said in a press statement posted to his Twitter account.

On the platform, he has been a staunch supporter of ‘free speech.’ “I invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. “Twitter has extraordinary potential,” he wrote in the filing.

“I hope that even my harshest critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means,” Musk said earlier today on Twitter. It’s also worth noting that Musk sent out a rather obnoxious tweet about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Saturday, ostensibly in response to Gates shorting Tesla. More than a million people have liked the tweet. He then joked that his tweet was being reviewed by the ‘shadowban council.’

New Ownership

According to Twitter, the publicly-traded company will now become a private company owned by Musk, who negotiated a $54.20 per-share purchase price.

“Twitter serves a purpose and is relevant to the entire world. We are immensely proud of our teams and inspired by work that has never been more critical, “Parag Agrawal, the company’s CEO, said in a tweet.

Musk secured $46.5 billion in financing last week to complete the deal, and Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, predicted earlier in the day that the board would likely accept his offer because no other buyer could be found.

In an interview with CNBC, he said, “This basically put (their) back against the wall, and they had to come to the negotiation table.” Around 1915 GMT, Twitter stock was trading 5.9% higher on Wall Street.

Poison Pill Strategy

While the board initially stated that it was considering Musk’s offer, it later rejected him and implemented a “poison pill” strategy that would have made it more difficult for Musk to gain control of the company.

Musk, whose immense wealth stems from the popularity of Tesla electric vehicles as well as other ventures, announced last week that he had secured funding.

Despite Musk’s wealth, the issue of financing had been viewed as a potential stumbling block because a large portion of his holdings is in Tesla stock rather than cash.

Musk claimed in a filing that the deal was made possible by a $13 billion debt facility from a financing consortium led by Morgan Stanley, a separate $12.5 billion margin loan from the same bank, and $21 billion from his own assets.

Musk’s efforts have sparked optimism about Twitter’s commercial potential, which has struggled to achieve profitable growth despite its cultural and political clout.

New Features

Twitter has made progress on new monetization features, such as subscription products, under Agrawal, who took over as CEO late last year. “Short term, Musk’s involvement at this stage runs the risk of disrupting those efforts,” Truist Securities said in a note.

However, the campaign of the polarising Tesla CEO has alarmed technology and free-speech experts, who point to Musk’s erratic statements and history of bullying critics, which contradict his stated goals.

According to the progressive group Media Matters for America, Trump could return to Twitter if Musk’s acquisition goes through, according to the progressive group Media Matters for America.

In a statement, the group’s president Angelo Carusone said, “Any negotiations to sell Twitter to Musk must include clear enforceable mechanisms to uphold and maintain existing community standards, including the removal of those who violate those standards.”

Team YTS

Christopher Poole : The Founder of 4Chan Who Tasted Success Without Being Known

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, Social media, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

The rise of computers and programming languages has brought a revolution in the world. The programming languages have become the biggest contribution to the world and the growth of the economy. That is why most of the people are not hesitant about taking a step in the same field. Little kids and teenagers are the ones who are more curious about them, and there is another reason behind it. The magic a person feels behind building things only by coding makes it interesting enough for the kids and the adults. Also, it has helped many people to grow financially as well.

One such teenage coder was Christopher Poole, who was only fifteen when he founded one of the biggest forum-based social network 4chan. An American enthusiast, Chris was always into programming and loved what he could do with it. Without letting people know, he used to code almost every night.

Chris Poole was born in 1988 in New York City. He lived with his mom and wanted to build a platform that would help him earn some extra money. While in school, he used to create comedy content and post it on ‘Something Awful’, a comedy website.

chris poole 4Chan — Image Source: cdn.vox-cdn.com

Chris was inspired by Japan’s famous imageboard of ‘Futaba Channel’ (2Chan) and wanted to create something similar for America as well. When he was still in school, he started working on a new project and developed 4Chan, the American version of the Japanese imageboard. He went on to follow the source code of Futaba Channel and took the help of AltaVista’s Babel Fish online translator to translate the code.

On 1 October 2003, when he was just 15, he finally launched 4Chan by pseudonym ‘Moot’. He used the name Moot as he did not want to mix his private and professional life. That is why there is not much information about Chris’s early life. His real identity was only revealed on 9 July 2008, after five years he launched 4Chan, that too, by The Wall Street Journal.

After launching 4Chan and completing his school education, Chris joined the Virginia Commonwealth University. But eventually, he had to quit college only after a few semesters, such that he could focus on his startup.

Soon, 4Chan emerged as a place where people could create and share meme and animes. They had the facility to share the content anonymously as well as non-anonymously. The platform was a great success, and even before revealing his real identity, he got the chance to speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University as Moot. He had become an influencer in no time.

In 2008, Leopoldo Godoy of Brazilian TV Globo called the site as “the ground zero of Western web culture”. He was named as the world’s most influential person of 2008 by the ‘Time’ magazine after it conducted an open internet poll.

In February 2010, Chris spoke at the ‘TED2010’ conference held at Long Beach, California. In the same year, he also raised a $625,000 for his next startup ‘Canvas Networks’, which he launched in January 2011. But unfortunately, he had to shut the platform due to the security breaches the site was facing.

Though he was running 4Chan with the name of Moot, he always conducted Q&As for the users and answered their questions. Chris worked for 4Chan as the administrator and had already left the job of programming at his company. He, after working for more than 10 years for the company, decided to step down from his post of administrator in 2015. During his career with 4Chan, he achieved a maximum user engagement, i.e. over 20 million monthly visitors to the site.

He announced the news on 21 January 2015 and on 23rd January conducted another Q&A on the platform and a live stream on YouTube.

In September 2015, 4Chan was acquired by Japanese internet entrepreneur Hiroyuki Nishimura for an undisclosed amount. In March next year, Chris revealed through a blog post that he will be joining Google. He joined the company and is still working as an employee.

Though Chris has been secretive about his life, one thing he has always been clear at the right to anonymity. The success he received at such an early age never put a bad influence on him. In fact, he always stayed away from the limelight.

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

www.xornor.co

Greg Tseng : The Co-Founder of Tagged, A Site Bringing People Together

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

It has always been said that the human being is a social animal. And, that is because only humans are capable of interacting with its surroundings and other creatures around him. Humans are able to make friends, besides their families. But making new friends is something that is both challenging and difficult. But, there are many, who even have a problem in starting a conversation and find friends, with whom they are comfortable with. But, for making this challenging task simple enough, Greg Tseng built such a site, named ‘Tagged.com’, which allows you to see who’s around you.

Tagged.com can be defined as a social discovery site. A site where you can view, talk, share tags and also share virtual gifts with people around you. Tagged was launched in 2004, by Harvard masterminds Greg Tseng and Johann Scheiler-Smith, who were science class buddies since class 7th. They both wanted Tagged to be different from all other social networking sites out there, mainly from Facebook.

greg tseng — Image Source: gettyimages.com

To make their website stand out, apart from other, Greg and Johann targeted the audience of age group between 13 and 19. Hence, the site was set up for teens at first. The design and the concept were such that users could meet other people in a short period of time. In October 2006, Tagged expanded its user base. Now, the network was not just for teens only, it was open for all the age groups. The move went as it was planned. Tagged, eventually, saw an increase in the number of its user (at that time) by having more than 80 million users registered, and 7 billion views on the page per month.

But, Tagged also attracted some negative publicity towards itself. In 2009, Tagged was on the verge of getting sacked due to ‘deceptive email marketing and invasion of privacy’. In the same year, Time Magazine’s journalist Sean Gregory mentioned Tagged as the ‘The World’s Most Annoying Website!’ During that time period, Tagged paid an approximate of $1.4 million to settle down all the lawsuits that were against it, and soon after that, inherited new privacy policies.

After having a smooth sail for years, Tagged again started drawing criticisms from the users about the inappropriate content that was on the site. So, following the protocols, Tagged limited its services to users who were above 18, from February 2014.

Tagged has a simple sign-up process for a free account. A profile is built with all of the key features such as public profile and a display profile. Tagged shows you people around you in accordance with the similarity of interests which is surely a standout from Facebook which restricts you among the people you know. The site also has a gold membership which is VIP status with a monthly fee. The VIP membership, however, allows you to see who visited your profile.

The site also has games on it, which is Greg Tseng’s “hi5’s” work. He built this game studio during the development of the website. On the Tagged.com, people can collect pets (Other Users) and can share virtual gifts with each other.

Alongside this, Greg also developed flyingchickens.com and CrushLink. In 2015, he stepped down as the CEO of the company. “I initiated it and it’s happening the way I want”, he said, when asked about why he was leaving the post. Tagged has projected more than $45 million in revenues, and seek a $1 billion valuation IPO. The company also changed its name to If(we). Greg’s own net worth is around $25 million.

The story of Greg Tseng shows that to stand apart, you must have new ideas and also, that handing responsibilities to others after a certain period of time is required, so as to keep rolling new ideas and innovations. The ex-CEO of Tagged is someone to learn from.

Raghav

Raghav is a student and a content writer. He loves to write about emerging as well as the existing technologies around and about the ones who bring them to you. Music is the other passion that Raghav processes. It is like the fuel to his body. He is also in writing songs and poems. He believes that life is short, so live the best out of what you have got. Raghav considers himself a sci-fi guy, having stories and tech all around in his head, all the time.

Reid Hoffman : The Mind Behind the Largest Corporate Social Network

Founder, Inspiration, Social media, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

Sometimes, it takes a long process for a person to understand and choose the right way that leads to his goals. Only a few can dream to help others achieve their dreams and bring out a positive change in the world. But if one truly wants to accomplish his dreams, he will find out a way. Same is the story of the infamous American internet entrepreneur and the venture capitalist- Reid Hoffman, who had initially dreamt about changing the world through his motivational speeches and eventually, reached out to a bigger platform and definitely have brought out his share of change.

Early Life

Reid Hoffman was born to William Parker Hoffman Jr. and Deanna Ruth, on 5 August 1967. He was born in Palo Alto, California and spent most of his childhood in Berkeley. He did his high school from The Putney School and earned his Bachelor Science degree in Symbolic Systems & Cognitive Science, from Stanford University. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and hence went to the Wolfson College, Oxford University to pursue a Master in Studies in Philosophy in 1993. He had also received a Dinkelspiel Award in his graduation from Stanford University.

Career

As a child, he always loved playing the tabletop roleplaying games. So in 1982, when he was just 12, he got his first job as an editor at a game developing company named as Chaosium. His work at the company was quite impressive, and in 1984, with the release of Chaosium’s ‘Borderlands’, a role-playing game, he got his name featured on its box, at the time he was just 14. He always wanted to become an influential person so that he can bring a change in the world. He had thought of becoming a professor. But soon he realised that writing books and reaching people can be a long way. So he diverted his mind towards entrepreneurship.

After graduating, he went to do an internship at Inglenook, a winery, followed by a job at Apple Computer. In Apple, he worked on a social network named as eWorld. After working for some time in Apple, he took a job at Fujitsu and in 1997, found his first company named as SocialNet.com. Soon after, setting up SocialNet.com, he joined PayPal as the COO, in 2000. His boss at PayPal, Peter Thiel says about Hoffman that he was a firefighter-in-chief at PayPal. At Paypal, he was responsible for most of the high-level jobs like payment infrastructure, government, legal issues, etc., that he handled efficiently under a great pressure.

Founding of LinkedIn

After eBay acquired Paypal, in 2002, Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, a professional social media network, with his old colleagues from SocialNet.com and Fujitsu. He also received some investment from his colleagues from Paypal, Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois. LinkedIn became a huge success and Hoffman became its founding CEO. Today, Hoffman holds a share worth $2.34 billion in Linked in and he serves as the Executive Chairman of the company. By 2014, LinkedIn had spread in more than 200 countries, with over 332 million members. In June 2016, Microsoft offered him an amount of $26.2 billion in cash for the acquisition of LinkedIn.

Investment, Writing & Motivational Speeches

LinkedIn was a huge success, after which, Hoffman found his interest in investment. He is one of the Angel investors, who are happily ready to invest in potential startups. It is said that Hoffman was the one who arranged the $500,000 angel investment meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel. Along with Peter, he had also invested in Facebook initially.

Reid Hoffman always wanted to become a positive influence the for its betterment. His desire of becoming a motivational speaker and writing books was always alive. He started writing from local blogs, followed by his ‘LinkedIn’s Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs’ and ‘LinkedinInfluencr’ blogs on LinkedIn. In February 2012, he released his first book ‘The Start-Up of You’ with co-author Ben Casnocha, that became the bestseller in New York and was critically acclaimed. In July 2014, he came with another release, ‘The Alliance’ with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh.

Hoffman also started a podcast named as ‘Masters of Scale’ on 5 May 2017, where he discusses various counterintuitive business theories with successful entrepreneurs.

Personal Life

Hoffman got married to Michelle Yee, in 2004, and the two live in Palo Alto, California. Hoffman is also in Philanthropy and is a member of many NGOs. In 2016, he donated $20 million to a charity Biohub.

Yashica Vashishtha

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