Chaos Theory is defined as a pattern in a series of seemingly random, chaotic incidents. Chaos, on the other hand, is just a state of total confusion with no order. It is more the latter than the former that has come to define Elon Musk's yearlong ownership of X, the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter.

On October 27, 2022, the eccentric billionaire reluctantly took over the erstwhile Twitter and in the months since, threw everything but the bathroom sink at the platform – by the way, does anyone wonder what happened to that bathroom sink?

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

Since then, Musk named himself the CEO, stepped down from the position, and "appointed" his dog the chief executive before naming a full-time successor. And in between, Musk made a series of bizarre decisions that deconstructed and haphazardly rebuilt the platform into what has now become X. These include mass layoffs of crucial teams, pushing employees to sleep in the office, aggressive monetisation of several core features including verification, some announcements that went nowhere and others that caused concern, all the while bleeding subscribers and advertisement money crucial to a social media platform, especially one that is under massive debt.

Currently, according to Bloomberg, X has 13% fewer users, while less than 1% signed up for premium services. X’s top five advertisers' spending is down 67%. According to the Wall Street Journal, the banks that lent Musk $13 billion to purchase the platform last year have no choice but to hang on to that debt as investor interest in the platform has plummeted. According to the WSJ report, seven banks, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays, lent Musk around $13 billion to buy Twitter; BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Mizuho were also involved. WSJ says Musk's debt package comprised $6.5 billion in term loans, an even split of $6 billion between secured and unsecured bonds, and a revolving line of credit amounting to $500 million.

Twitter (sorry, X) needs to pay $1.5 billion in annual interest payments. Last year, the platform reported revenue of $4.4 billion, down 11% from the preceding year. X, which has since gone private, no longer discloses its financials, but analysts expect 2023 to be worse due to negative cash flow and the sharp plunge in ad money.

Musk's Twitter takeover

The tale of Musk's Twitter takeover is one that has byzantine twists and turns. The Tesla CEO first announced his decision to buy the microblogging platform for $41 billion in April 2022 before quickly backtracking, citing a "misreported" number of bot accounts on the platform — Twitter had said only 5% of its userbase comprised bots, but Musk claimed it was much higher.

This led to a legal battle, with a former top Twitter executive-turned-whistleblower further muddying the waters by seemingly backing up Musk's claims. All to no avail, however, as Musk was forced to buy the platform for his original offer price.

Twitter Hulla'blue'

One of the first major decisions Musk made, one that ruffled many feathers, was nixing the iconic blue badge — a symbol of verification for an individual or organisation. The badge had become crucial to separate genuine accounts from fake ones; the wheat from the chaff. He then ensured blue ticks would only be issued to subscribers of Twitter Blue, a decision that immediately backfired as several fake accounts of businesses, celebrities and political leaders popped up, forcing Musk to push the move to the back burner.

Musk finally got his way—this April, legacy verified accounts started losing their blue badges. Organisations received gold ticks, political leaders and government officials received a grey badge, and Musk himself infamously paid for a few celebrities' verifications, such as Stephen King and LeBron James, while quietly reinstating the checkmark for accounts with more than a million followers.

Amusingly enough, a few days later, some enterprising users found a loophole in the website's code—possibly a result of entire engineering teams being sacked – simply adding "former blue check" in the bio would reinstate the blue tick, albeit only temporarily.

Mass Layoffs, Broken System

This was, perhaps, the one decision that had the most human impact. Just weeks after taking over, Musk jettisoned over half the 7,500-strong workforce, with layoffs and resignations spanning entire teams, representing critical infrastructure. The result was a broken mess of a platform, replete with glitches, bugs, and at least one instance of a massive outage. By January this year, according to a CNBC report, Twitter was down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers.

Musk himself admitted that his hand was forced and that he regrets buying the platform, describing it as a "painful ride".

Decree by Tweet

Musk, who has always had a reputation for stirring up controversy on Twitter, has kicked it up a notch since his takeover of the platform. He announced key policy changes through tweets; some of them materialised, some didn't, but all of them caused whiplash. Here are some of his most 'notable' decisions, in no particular order:

1. New CEO: Musk named American media executive Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter, a move that immediately attracted backlash from the community.

2. Bye-bye birdie: This is perhaps the one decision that decimated Twitter—rebranding it to 'X', a move that nullified the brand recognition and heft it had built for nearly two decades. It's not Twitter anymore; it's X. You don't "tweet" anymore, you "post". "Retweet" is now "re-post". The iconic blue bird is now extinct, replaced by a generic-looking, soulless 'X'.

You get the gist.

3. Cap on posts you can read per day: In July, Musk drew flak from all corners of Twitter after he announced a temporary limit on the number of tweets that accounts can read per day, "in an effort to discourage data scraping and system manipulation". Verified accounts were initially limited to reading 6,000 tweets per day, while unverified accounts were limited to 600 tweets per day. New unverified accounts were limited to 300 tweets per day. These limits were later increased, but the move caused immediate backlash from users.

4. Charging users a monthly fee: With few takers for Twitter Blue, or X Premium, as it is now called, Musk recently floated the idea of charging all users a monthly fee to access the platform. Musk fell back on his favourite excuse for this decision: combating misinformation and curbing the number of fake accounts.

5. 'Poop' emoji to press queries: In March, Musk stated that the company set up an auto-response system for the email address of its press team. Journalists asking questions from the social media platform’s email address would just receive a reply with a poop emoji instead of any real answers. The poop emoji will be the only thing within the auto-response's subject and body.

6. Musk vs Zuck: Perhaps the most amusing of all of Musk's antics was this one: challenging Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight. Zuckerberg accepted the challenge, but the only blows the duo exchanged were online barbs. Zuckerberg eventually said Musk wasn't serious about the cage fight and that he was "moving on".

As things stand

All of this captures but a sliver of the ongoing drama at X. While the banks that financed the deal are left holding the bag, CEO Yaccarino is confident that the company will turn a profit in early 2024, and that the platform's ad revenue will go back to the levels of yore.

All of this happened just in Year One. What do the next 12 months hold? There is no predicting. Only time will tell.

Also read: Elon Musk offers $1 billion to Wikipedia, but on one condition

(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)

First Published:Oct 26, 2023 9:00 PM IST