Almost Half Of Top 100 Tweets Since Buying The Site Are His

Topline

Twitter owner Elon Musk says there’s still work to do to reshape Twitter into the platform he envisions, but if one of his goals was to get people to read his own tweets, he’s already succeeded, since the billionaire Tesla CEO’s posts have utterly dominated the platform ever seen he got the keys to Twitter’s office.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the Tesla Giga Texas manufacturing “Cyber Rodeo” grand opening party … [+] in Austin, Texas, on April 7, 2022. (Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

Musk has penned seven of the top eight tweets, ten of the top 15 and 49 out of the top 100 since he took over as Twitter owner in late October, according to data compiled by social media tracking firm NewsWhip.

His late-night October 27 “the bird is freed” tweet—which seemed to correspond to the time his $44 billion deal to take over the platform finally closed—is the most popular tweet of the past eight weeks, attracting nearly 2.9 million total interactions.

Musk’s next three most popular tweets are a grab bag of brief comments, led by his “Comedy is now legal on Twitter” post on October 28, then “Twitter is ALIVE” on November 19 and “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” on December 11.

The only non-Musk tweets to make it in the 14 most popular since he took over are four posts about the World Cup—two from French superstar Kylian Mbappa, one from Portuguese legend Cristiano Ronaldo and another from singer Shakira.

Surprising Fact

Musk recently has appeared to tie major company policy decisions to the results of polls he tweets, but only two of those polls appeared among the top 100 since October 27. His November 18 poll asking whether to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account came in as the 23rd most popular tweet, with 1.1 million interactions, while his poll this week asking, “Should I step down as head of Twitter?” ranked 36th. Trump’s account was reinstated shortly after the poll closed with a majority voting to let him back on, though the former president has not tweeted since coming back, opting to keep his social media presence on his own platform, Truth Social. Some 57.5% of respondents voted in favor of Musk stepping down as Twitter CEO this week, but he remains in charge of the company. “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted after the poll closed.

Key Background

Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, the dramatic back-and-forth over Musk’s attempts to pull out of the agreement and the billionaire’s seemingly chaotic management style after taking over the company attracted a significant amount of media attention and public curiosity, which has greatly grown Musk’s personal social media presence. His follower count on Twitter has ballooned from 81.5 million on April 14—the day a regulatory filing revealed his offer to buy Twitter—to 122.8 million as of Friday.

Tangent

Musk vowed to allow essentially all speech permissible by law on Twitter, but many of his decisions have strayed far from that ideal. Twitter last week banned an account that used publicly available information to track the location of Musk’s private jet—which Musk claimed put his family in danger. The next day, several high-profile journalists were banned, ostensibly for posting links to the jet tracker, though most were also strong critics of Musk. An account for rival social media platform Mastodon was also suspended last week, after which Twitter announced a ban on accounts that give “free promotion” to a litany of other social networks. The journalists’ accounts were reinstated after Musk polled users about whether they should be immediately allowed back and a majority said “yes.”

Forbes’ Valuation

We estimate Musk’s net worth at $146.5 billion, mostly due to his stake in Tesla, making him the second-wealthiest person on earth, behind Bernard Arnault and his family. Musk’s net worth topped $300 billion earlier this year, making him the world’s richest person by a wide margin, but his wealth has slid significantly as Tesla’s share price fell.