Elon Musk will he jeopardize the return of man to the Moon? In any case, his activism has NASA chief Bill Nelson wondering if the SpaceX president’s engagement on Twitter is likely to “distract” of the Artemis lunar conquest program.
Granted, Mr. Musk’s activism on the network is cause for concern. On Sunday, December 11, when he inaugurated a new subscription formula, he saw fit to spark a new controversy by fiercely attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House Covid adviser, target of the American right.
But Elon Musk does not care, as he is convinced that he can do everything and succeed at the same time: send men into space and relaunch the social network at the blue bird, so in bad shape. He presented in a tweet on Sunday his plan to subscribe for 8 euros a month, or 11 euros for Apple iPhone users.
For this modest sum, the user will have a label that confirms his identity, a possible correction of his tweets after publication and the ability to download the videos in high quality. The formula was tested in late October and was quickly suspended after the avalanche of errors and fraud it had caused.
Untimely declarations
The quirky billionaire pursues two very rational, if not realistic, goals. The first is to diversify its sources of income, to free itself from the dictatorship of advertising and at the same time find the way to profitability.
His untimely statements, such as the one against Dr. Fauci or his spats with rapper Kanye West, scared away major advertisers and forced him according to The Wall Street Journal, to offer a 50% discount on its prices. Elon Musk claimed before launching his flash campaign of layoffs on November 10 that the company was losing $4 million (€3.8 million) a day.
The second goal is a much bigger dream, as the Tesla and SpaceX boss likes them. He intends to make Twitter a universal platform on the model of WeChat, the Chinese application of Tencent, which offers its users the benefits of a social network, a payment application, a trading site, games and other millions of third-party apps.
The only problem is that it is also the dream of Meta/Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple, the most advanced in this concept with the “Swiss Army Knife” platform. That’s a lot of opponents at the same time, and his chances of success are small. All that he loves and which one day may end up losing him.