Elon Musk Takes Unusually Long Twitter Break
Billionaire is trying complete a planned $44 billion deal to buy the social-media platform
Elon Musk is on his longest stretch without posting on Twitter in nearly five years, a nine-day hiatus that comes in the midst of tumultuous efforts to complete his planned $44 billion deal to buy the platform.
The billionaire chief executive of Tesla Inc. TSLA -1.76%▼ last posted on June 21, marking Thursday as the most extended silence since October 2017. Normally a serial tweeter, he hasn’t gone more than six days without tweeting since January 2018, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of tweet data. Since then he has taken a few four-day breaks, most recently this past January, the analysis shows.
Mr. Musk’s break from Twitter follows a recent period in which he was especially active on the platform, with a steady flow of posts about the deal, in which he has talked about his criticism of the company and its policies as well as his plans. Of the 10 weeks with the most tweets from Mr. Musk since he joined the platform more than a decade ago, five have come since April 1. Mr. Musk’s large stake in Twitter Inc. TWTR -1.08%▼ became public on April 4, and he reached his deal to acquire it on April 25.
It couldn’t be determined why Mr. Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, is missing from Twitter. He has long used the platform as a main channel of communication on a range of subjects, from rocket launches by SpaceX, to a question about cheese, to expressing opinions on U.S. politics. Unlike most other users with large followings, he often reacts or replies to posts from others.
The gap comes as Mr. Musk juggles several business and personal matters.
After a stretch of rapid growth and a surging stock price, Tesla is grappling with challenges including parts shortages and Covid-19 shutdowns in China, while also trying to increase production at two new factories. This week Tesla closed one of its Silicon Valley offices and laid off about 200 people there as part of the electric-vehicle maker’s plans to trim its salaried head count in the midst of rising costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Tesla is expected to report its first sequential decline in quarterly deliveries in more than two years.
In addition, some employees at Space Exploration Technologies Corp., as SpaceX is formally known, wrote a letter in June raising concerns and expressing frustration over recent public statements Mr. Musk made and his behavior, describing them as a source of embarrassment and distraction. The company then fired some of the employees involved, saying the letter diverted employees’ attention from company operations.
Mr. Musk’s team has told people involved with the Twitter acquisition that he has been less available recently because he has been dealing with personal issues, according to a person familiar with the matter.
During Mr. Musk’s recent absence from Twitter, his account surpassed 100 million followers, further solidifying his status as one of the platform’s most followed users.
Mr. Musk reached a deal in April to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share and take it private. A few weeks later he said the deal was on hold over concern that Twitter’s estimate of spam and fake accounts on its platform—which it has long pegged at less than 5% of its monetizable daily users—might be flawed. Twitter in recent weeks gave him historical tweet data and access to its so-called fire hose of near real-time tweets, people familiar with the matter said.
He has, at times, advertised taking a pause from the social-media platform, only to return quickly. Last year he tweeted, “Off Twitter for a while.” He resumed tweeting a day later.
