 | |
| Authors | Kate Conger Ryan Mac |
|---|---|
| Subject | |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Published | September 17, 2024 |
| Publisher | Penguin Press |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | 978-0593656136 (Hardcover) |
| OCLC | 1432234243 |
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter is a 2024 book written by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. It covers the controversial takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. [1] [2] [3] [4] Character Limit was published on September 17, 2024, by Penguin Press.
Character Limit chronicles the rise and fall of Twitter after Elon Musk's tumultuous $44-billion-dollar acquisition. The book showcases Musk's volatility, highlighting the actions that led to the company's drastic devaluation and the resurgence of unmoderated hate-speech, misinformation, and white nationalism on the platform. [5] [6]
Conger and Mac detail the night Musk's Twitter acquisition was formalized in at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco. Twitter's San Francisco headquarters are two different buildings: a large building and a small building behind it which are connected via a bridge. On the night of October 26, 2022, there were "two separate worlds playing out on either side of the bridge" with Musk signing the acquisition documents with executives in the smaller building while Twitter employees in the larger building were crying at potentially losing their job. [7] Another detail in the book is how Musk had cut Twitter's janitorial staff, forcing Twitter employees to bring their own toilet paper to work. [8] [7]
Prior to its release, Character Limit was listed as one of Literary Hub's most anticipated books of 2024. [9]
Kirkus Reviews praised the book as an "engrossing, precise account of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter (now X). A compelling fusion of business history and worrisome social narrative". [1]
James Ball of The Guardian , in a positive review, wrote that Conger and Mac have the "astonishing ability to take the reader into almost every room that mattered during the contentious $44bn acquisition". [4]
Zack Ruskin of The Washington Post called Character Limit "riveting" and writes the book "offers a treasure trove of answers regarding Elon Musk's somewhat shadowy acquisition of the company, both in terms of the financials and his motivation." Ruskin said the book serves as a "telling lesson in the cost of getting everything you want". [5]
Despite Conger and Mac reaching out with over 500 questions before the publication of Character Limit, Musk did not respond. [10] His only response to the book was a retweet to a photo of Character Limit to which he replied with two laughing emojis. [11]
Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. Other involvements include ownership of X Corp., the company that operates the social media platform X, and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. In November 2024, president-elect Donald Trump announced Musk is set to become co-chair of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the second Trump administration. Musk is the wealthiest individual in the world; as of November 2024 Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$304 billion.
Gary S. Gensler is an American government official and former investment banker serving as the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gensler previously worked for Goldman Sachs and has led the Biden–Harris transition's Federal Reserve, Banking, and Securities Regulators agency review team. Prior to his appointment, he was professor of Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Bret Steven Taylor is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is most notable for leading the team that co-created Google Maps and his tenures as the CTO of Facebook, as the chairman of Twitter, Inc.'s board of directors prior to its acquisition by Elon Musk, and as the co-CEO of Salesforce. Taylor was additionally one of the founders of FriendFeed and the creator of Quip. Since 2023, he is the founder of Sierra, chairman of OpenAI, and a board member of Shopify.
Twitter, Inc. was an American social media company based in San Francisco, California, which operated and was named for its flagship social media network prior to its rebrand as X. In addition to Twitter, the company previously operated the Vine short video app and Periscope livestreaming service. In April 2023, Twitter merged with X Holdings and ceased to be an independent company, becoming a part of X Corp.
The history of Twitter, later known as X, can be traced back to a brainstorming session at Odeo.
Mastodon is a open source, self-hosted, social networking service. Mastodon uses the ActivityPub protocol for federation which allows users to communicate between independent Mastodon instances and other ActivityPub compatible services. Mastodon has microblogging features similar to Twitter, and is generally considered to be a part of the Fediverse.
Vijaya Gadde is an American attorney, who served as general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter. Her role included handling issues such as harassment, misinformation, and harmful speech, and other decisions made by Twitter. On October 27, 2022, she was fired by Elon Musk, following his acquisition of Twitter.
Elon Musk is the CEO or owner of multiple companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X Corp, and has expressed many views on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from politics to science.
Parag Agrawal is an Indian-American software engineer and businessman who was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from November 2021 to October 2022.
Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century is Tim Higgins's book about Tesla, Inc., published in 2021, that focuses on the company while under the management of Elon Musk. The book does not contain any interviews with Musk himself, but many anonymous current and former executives from Tesla. In response to the book in general, Musk tweeted "Higgins managed to make his book both false *and* boring".
Bluesky is a decentralized microblogging social networking service primarily operated by Bluesky Social, PBC. It was created as a proof of concept for the AT Protocol, a communication protocol for decentralized social networks. The platform is analogous to Twitter, where users can share short text posts, images, and video, and can like, repost, and reply to any given post.
Sriram Krishnan is an Indian-American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The business magnate Elon Musk initiated an acquisition of American social media company Twitter, Inc. on April 14, 2022, and concluded it on October 27, 2022. Musk had begun buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming its largest shareholder by April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Twitter invited Musk to join its board of directors, an offer he initially accepted before declining. On April 14, Musk made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company, to which Twitter's board responded with a "poison pill" strategy to resist a hostile takeover before unanimously accepting Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion on April 25. Musk stated that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, make its algorithms open-source, combat spambot accounts, and promote free speech, framing the acquisition as the cornerstone of X, an "everything app".
Ned Segal is an American business executive. He was the chief financial officer of Twitter from 2017 to 2022. He was fired, along with three other top executives, on October 27, 2022, following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company.
Ryan Mac is a Vietnamese-American writer and journalist who works for the The New York Times. He has previously worked as a reporter at Buzzfeed News and Forbes. Mac was awarded the 2019 Mirror Award and the 2020 George Polk Award for his reporting on Facebook. He is the co-author of 2024's Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.
Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022; Musk acted as CEO of Twitter until June 2023 when he was succeeded by Linda Yaccarino. In a move that, despite Yaccarino's accession, was widely attributed to Musk, Twitter was rebranded to X on July 23, 2023, and its domain name changed from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024.
X Corp. is an American technology company headquartered in Bastrop, Texas. Established by Elon Musk in 2023 as the successor to Twitter, Inc., it is a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings Corp., which is itself mostly owned by Musk. The company owns the social networking service X, and has announced plans to use it as a base for other offerings. While the official name of the company and social network is now X, many users and media outlets continue to refer to it as Twitter.
Linda Yaccarino is an American executive who has served as the chief executive officer of X Corp since June 2023. She previously held the position of chairman of global advertising & partnerships for NBCUniversal.
Jared John Birchall is an American business executive and a former banker. He is the chief executive officer of neurotechnology company Neuralink and the wealth manager of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk since 2016. As Musk's adviser, right-hand man, and fixer, Birchall holds executive or administrative positions in other endeavors of his including the Boring Company, Musk Foundation, xAI, and managing his family office.
Kate Conger is an American journalist and writer who works for The New York Times. She has previously worked as a reporter at Gizmodo and TechCrunch. She is the co-author of 2024's Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.