Jeremy Peters, Niraj Chokshi, and Benjamin Mullin got a copy of Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk biography early and give us the juicy details for the New York Times. Some humor:
> Days after Twitter’s board approved the deal, Mr. Musk told his four teenage sons that he had purchased the social network to sway the next U.S. presidential election. “How else are we going to get Trump elected in 2024?” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/technology/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-takeaways.html
> ... but Mr. Musk’s sons still didn’t understand his rationale for buying Twitter, an app they rarely used.
> The “musketeers,” as Musk loyalists were known inside Twitter, searched Twitter’s Slack archives for keywords including “Elon,” and fired dozens of employees who had made snarky comments about Mr. Musk.
Explains why I was suspended on X.
> Mr. Musk’s decision to start X.AI came partly out of concerns about underpopulation. (He is the father of 10 children.)
> Mr. Musk believed that “at some point, biological brainpower would be dwarfed by digital brainpower.”
> “[David] Zaslav told him that he was doing self-destructive things that made it harder to attract brands that were aspirational. He should focus on improving the product by adding longer video offerings and making ads more effective.”
Yes, Elon is a product genius. 🤦♂️
That's it for all the X-related stuff, but it's a good read if you care about Musk himself.
Bottom-line:
- Musk did not invent the idea for long-form video on X, David Zaslav gave him that idea.
- Musk indeed did fire people for talking smack about him in Slack.
- Musk’s children and ex-girlfriend were all perplexed as to why he bought Twitter.
- Elon is *really* concerned about underpopulation, and it seems like his Twitter mismanagement stems from interpersonal issues.
Today in X
vox popsicle vox dei
count
Phil Moore