On the 25th of April, the board of Twitter agreed to a $44bn (£34.5bn) takeover offer from the billionaire Elon Musk. This hostile takeover of the global social media platform has been a hot topic of conversation across the world, with some of the most prominent publications, business leaders and even politicians weighing in.

Methodology

We wanted to gain a more granular understanding of how the Internet is responding to Musk’s platform takeover, so we used the Fifty platform to analyse the reaction of different online communities. Our Insight team built bespoke audience studies and ran a social listening analysis to compare the US and UK’s engaged audiences and their varying levels of engagement and sentiment towards the news.

Analysis

In this section, we aim to provide reactive insights using active social listening data to provide context into the conversation surrounding Twitter’s takeover.

Figures 1 & 2 represent the total number of mentions of Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase per million people. The data shows a much larger uptick in engagement with the topic in the US, given Elon’s status as an American contemporary culture icon, it is understandable why we see such a disparity between geographies. 

From Figures 3 & 4, we can see that the top keywords and topics are very similar, with only slight variations between the two countries. Naturally, the number of occurrences is far larger in the US than in the UK due to the population difference, but the graphs suggest that the conversation surrounding the takeover is reciprocated across both locations. Common keywords suggest there is concern over the billionaire's acquisition of the platform with phrases such as “corruption” and “hostile takeover” indexing in the data, however, we also see high levels of engagement surrounding “free speech” and “support” sparking a divisive split within the audiences. This corresponds to our sentiment data (see Figures 5 & 6) which shows that, whilst there is an overall negative skew to the conversation, there is also a small proportion of the audience that sees the acquisition as a positive outcome.

Fifty’s Audience Breakdown

Utilising Fifty’s audience intelligence platform, we segmented the different communities and audiences involved in the conversation to identify the audiences most invested in the Twitter takeover.

Politically-engaged individuals indexed across both locations with a stark difference in opinions that points to a clear political divide. Our analysis uncovered audiences across both ends of the political spectrum, with Tribes centred on progressives and traditionalists indexing among the top tribes within the study. There seems to be a wider political narrative emerging here, as both parties appear to be taking a stand on the topic of free speech - one of the key reasons why Musk decided to acquire the social media platform in the first place.

Like him or not, Musk is an undisputed champion of cryptocurrencies, successfully paving the way for businesses to use and adopt innovative decentralised finance systems. Musk’s influence within the crypto sphere means his actions also have the power to trigger drastic changes in the market. Whether he’s announcing his commitment to adopting Bitcoin for his company, or simply tweeting about Dogecoin, his authority within the space is evident.

Technology decision-makers and Tech Professionals alike maintain a keen interest in Elon Musk’s most recent ventures. As the Co-Founder and CEO of one of the world’s most valuable tech companies, Musk has become a bona fide tech icon, so it’s no surprise that we see a large community of these innovative individuals engaging in the conversation. Amongst this group, we find venture capitalists and start-up founders, trying to emulate Elon’s success in the business world.

New Wave Culture Vultures can be described as young generations absorbing anything new, innovative and on-trend. The assortment and prominence of Tribes associated with this community indicate Elon’s eminence within this young and savvy sphere. We also see communities of Gamers, Grime & Hip-Hop Fans, Students and Trendy Millennials showing high levels of interest in the conversation.

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