He Always Tweeted Like He Owned the Place

Mr. Musk’s Twitter, very like his cash, works in ways in which others’ don’t. He follows solely 114 accounts, however his tweets normally obtain tens of 1000’s of replies apiece, and infrequently many extra. He opens his Twitter app to what’s fairly probably the busiest notifications tab on the whole service, representing tens of millions of phrases directed at him, largely about him.

With every pull of a thumb, the tab algorithmically replenishes from a pool of extra new posts than a single human might presumably hope to learn. It’s a Twitter that’s too busy and overloaded to resemble Twitter as most individuals understand it, with each potential notification bubble eternally studying “99+.”

Twitter, for almost all of customers, is a spot to observe individuals and possibly publish. For a smaller group of customers, it’s a spot to attempt to amass a following. For somebody in Mr. Musk’s place, “it’s like he’s texting the world,” mentioned Jake Updegraff, a star social media manager with expertise operating massive Twitter accounts.

With a big sufficient viewers, Mr. Updegraff mentioned, “it’s like a complete discussion board underneath every thing you publish.” It’s an on-demand portal to the middle of a media galaxy, by which a daily feed of knowledge is changed with an infinite stream of individuals addressing you by identify. For the appropriate form of individual, few issues might be extra intoxicating (or extra debilitating).

The methods by which Mr. Musk has leveraged Twitter for real-world energy are measured with completely different instruments, and on a distinct scale, than no matter clout he has been in a position to accumulate inside the platform. They’re what is going to matter most sooner or later, to him and to the remainder of us. Mr. Musk plainly sees worth in what Twitter already does and in what it has allowed him to do, and his need to guard or lengthen these qualities might have severe penalties effectively past the platform.

For decoding Mr. Musk’s claims about how Twitter might change, his expertise with the platform might be instructive. He has used Twitter to advertise his firms — Tesla specifically, but additionally SpaceX, the Boring firm and others — and relentlessly assault his critics and rivals.