Breaking Twitter
Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History
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Beschreibung des Verlags
‘An excitable, high-octane account’ – Independent
In October 2022, Elon Musk marched through Twitter’s front doors after buying the digital giant for $44 billion. His takeover came with the promise of fundamental change, but nothing could prepare the company for the chaos to come – brutal mass firings, an exodus of advertisers and ‘blue-tick’ celebrities and a vicious battle for control.
With unique access to Twitter insiders and Musk’s confidants, this is the astonishing story from all sides. Why did Elon overhaul Twitter’s blue-tick system, and how did it lead to the near-collapse of the company’s revenue? Will Twitter – now X – survive? How has the constant negative press coverage affected Elon?
With a wealth of hidden details, Breaking Twitter gives ringside seats to one of the most dramatic and compelling business stories of our time.
‘Mezrich’s books are the sort of engrossing reads you pick up in the airport then find the blockbuster film on the plane’ – Evening Standard
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Mezrich (Dumb Money) provides a novelistic recap of Musk's tumultuous reign as Twitter CEO up to February 2023, before its name change. Mezrich takes almost palpable glee in the chaos that followed Musk's purchase of the company in October 2022, detailing his firing of half of Twitter's workforce, advertisers' exodus as hate speech surged on the platform, and the bungled blue check system revamp. In Mezrich's telling, Musk quickly withered from a brash visionary to a petty tyrant; for instance, Musk, nonplussed that President Biden's Super Bowl tweet scored more impressions than his own, allegedly ordered Twitter engineers to boost his tweets' visibility by a thousandfold. Sourcing the narrative from a few pseudonymous Twitter insiders, Mezrich cops to altering timelines and inventing composite characters, and renders Musk's stream of consciousness in thunderous Technicolor even though the tycoon declined to talk to him ("Elon's four-hundred-foot tall glittery stainless-steel Starship... was utterly spectacular, the most beautiful sight Elon had ever seen, the most beautiful thing anyone had ever seen... and the whole fucking room shook and shook and shook," he reports from inside Musk's head during a SpaceX rocket launch). Still, the speculation on Musk's mindset feels plausible, and those who can look past the liberties taken with the truth will enjoy the propulsive tale, well told. This provides further proof of Mezrich's talent for chronicling the foibles of the tech elite.
