Twitter sprays mogul’s team with ‘firehose’ of data as unending saga continues
Twitter has reportedly thrown its $44 billion buyout by Elon Musk to a shareholder vote, which could take place around late July or early August. Execs told employees of the plans on Wednesday, according to outlets including CNBC and the Financial Times. The move follows reiterations by Musk’s camp that he is prepared to walk away from the deal if the social media network fails to provide accurate information on the number of fake accounts. This would mean taking a hit from the termination fee but, hey, what’s $1 billion to the world’s richest man? In an attempt to break the stalemate, Twitter has agreed to share ever more data with the SpaceX and Tesla mogul, including that which it sells to social media monitoring companies as part of its licensing business. It is giving this data to Musk for free – perhaps as soon as this week, according to The sources. This includes what has been called the “firehose”, the “massive stream of data comprising more than 500 million tweets posted each day”, as described by WaPo, “which comprises not only a real-time record of tweets but the devices they tweet from, as well as information about the accounts that tweet.
