Elon Musk plans “significant improvements” to Twitter after joining board

Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX fame, is now joining the Twitter board after becoming the social media company’s largest shareholder, and has announced plans to implement “significant improvements” to the platform.

Musk, 50, was confirmed in public filings at the start of April as the biggest shareholder of Twitter with over 9% of the company’s shares, worth over $3 billion.

Following this move, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Musk would be welcomed to join the board, tweeting “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.”

In response to Agrawal, Musk confirmed that he would take up the offer, and was keen to be hands-on in his ownership and directorship.

“Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter,” he responded, also suggesting that the changes would be coming fast – in the coming months.

Edit button coming to Twitter?

Musk already sparked a frenzy among Twitter users by running a poll for whether an edit button should be introduced, to allow tweets to be amended after posting.

Unsurprisingly, the results overwhelming favored yay, or ‘yse’ as Musk aptly put it.

Another problem he looks keen to tackle is the infestation of crypto spam bots, which hijack verified profiles in an attempt to trick unwitting users.

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Elon himself is one of the biggest targets, as these accounts will often impersonate him personally. He dubbed it the “single most annoying problem” on the website.

He has also mentioned making Twitter’s algorithm open source.

Whether Twitter actually ends up creating an edit button or resolving the plague of spam bots remains to be seen, but clearly, these user-focused issues are at the top of Musk’s agenda.

CEO Agrawal said that Elon is “both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term.”