JAKARTA – Tesla Inc. CEO, Elon Musk, said Monday, May 2 that he wants to expand Twitter's reach beyond its current "niche," until most Americans use the social media platform.
Musk has signed a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, raising questions among employees and the public about his strategy for running the social media network going forward.
He told reporters gathered on the red carpet at the annual Met Gala in New York that an important measure of success is whether Twitter can significantly expand its audience.
"Right now, it's kind of a niche. I want a much larger percentage of the country to engage, engage in dialogue," said Musk, who attended the celebrity-studded event with his mother, Maye Musk, a model.
This raises a question mark as to whether Musk, who has good relations with the Chinese government, will lobby for them to accept Twitter. The reason is that so far China is one of the countries that prohibits social media and severely limits the freedom of expression of its people. This is in stark contrast to Musk's mission on Twitter.
According to its latest earnings report, Twitter has about 40 million daily active users in the United States. Musk said he wanted the platform to be "as broad as possible, where ideally most of America is there and talking," and as trustworthy as possible.
The billionaire also said he would make Twitter transparent about how tweets were promoted or taken down and wanted his software to be publicly available even for criticism.
Asked about a potential employee exodus, Musk said emphatically: "This is a free country."
"Of course if anyone feels uncomfortable with it, they will naturally go elsewhere. That's okay," he said, as quoted by Reuters.
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