Elon Musk isn’t the owner ofTwitterjust yet as he’s decided to put the deal on hold for the time being. While the Tesla CEO said thathis takeover of Twitteris far from dead, he wants to take some time for the company to review specific numbers before he completes the deal.The stall in the handover of the social media company is just the latest of what has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for its users. News thatMusk was trying to buy Twitterfirst broke early last month and the reactions to the deal were strong from both those who supported it and those who were against it. After there were some initial denials that Musk was even interested in such a purchase, he ended up confirming he was making a real move for the company.RELATED:Elon Musk May Charge Money for Some Twitter FeaturesWhile Twitter initially fought the takeover, the two sides agreed on a deal that was quite lucrative for the social media site’s major shareholders. However, Musk is now putting that lucrative deal on pause until the company can sort out its numbers when it comes to how many of its monetizable daily active users are actually spam accounts.
Musk took to the social media platform to tweet a May 2 report fromReuterswhere Twitter claimed spam accounts made up less than five percent of the site’s 226 million active users. The billionaire added thathis purchase of Twitterwas “on hold pending details supporting calculation” of the company’s claims that spam accounts were indeed such a minor inconvenience.
It appears that the part of the report that stood out to Musk was whereTwittersaid the number it arrived at when it came to spam accounts was just an “estimate.” There have also been other times when the platform has admitted statistics it circulated were inaccurate, most recently when it acknowledged in an earnings report that it had over-counted its daily users for three years straight. Its miscounting led to the company claiming it had an extra 1.9 million daily users per quarter.
Musk has made cutting down on the number of spambots and fake accounts one of his big public goals for when he officially takes the helm of the social media giant. While the potential confusion over the official number of just how many of those accounts make up daily users, he’s also made it clear that the deal to take overTwitteris only on hold and that he’s still committed to making it work.
