Elon Musk has taken on two critically tough issues with Twitter

Overpaying for Twitter within the midst of a tech inventory downturn and secular decline in social media promoting might transform the least of Elon Musk’s troubles.

Having accomplished his buy of the corporate final week, the world’s richest man has simply taken on not one however two critically tough issues. Failure to resolve them would tarnish his enviable repute because the uncommon all-purpose entrepreneur who has introduced a golden contact to markets as completely different as electrical vehicles and rocket ships. It might additionally undermine his pretensions to having the ability to repair tough societal issues, at simply the second he appears bent on utilizing his appreciable wealth and private affect to imagine a extra outstanding position in public life.

As one veteran Silicon Valley financier warned when the billionaire first declared his need to purchase Twitter: this deal might transform Musk’s Waterloo.

The primary drawback is to cement Twitter’s position as an open market for concepts with out on the similar time turning it into what he calls a “hellscape”. In some methods, Musk himself often is the worst particular person to tackle this job.

For a begin, his personal use of Twitter hardly makes him appear to be an appropriate arbiter of on-line behaviour. He has typically proven a tone-deafness in trolling his enemies and has used the service to take purpose at individuals he disagrees with. He notoriously tweeted that he was near a fictitious Tesla buyout, resulting in a fantastic from the US Securities and Alternate Fee and the lack of his Tesla chairmanship.

Regardless of claiming to be a “free speech absolutist”, Musk has already conceded that a point of content material moderation is required. However he hasn’t defined clearly why he thinks Twitter’s earlier administration failed at this job, or what requirements he would apply in making an attempt to do it higher. After sacking a lot of the corporate’s prime administration, together with the manager most instantly answerable for tackling on-line harassment and misinformation, he appears doomed to repeat classes Twitter has already spent a few years studying.

Musk’s in depth enterprise pursuits additionally complicate the image. His corporations are depending on authorities choices in relation to issues akin to opening new automobile vegetation, securing uncooked supplies and successful contracts for rocket launches. That would give overseas governments leverage in the event that they need to affect how Twitter operates.

His second drawback is Twitter’s failure to interrupt out of a comparatively slender enterprise area of interest. For the data junkies who spend massive elements of their day on the service, it is a useful instrument. However Musk has set his sights on reaching a far greater viewers, whereas additionally transferring past promoting to become profitable from funds and commerce.

His supporters speak as if his report in different markets nearly ensures success. One co-investor within the Twitter buyout, talking earlier than the deal was accomplished, claimed to be unconcerned in regards to the $44bn buy value, which was agreed earlier than the current tech inventory hunch. With Musk in cost, this particular person stated, the corporate may find yourself being value $300bn. But it was not clear how this may be achieved.

Musk has recommended that one path to enlargement might be to construct greater audiences round completely different specialist pursuits. That’s one thing Twitter had already been engaged on, although it was lagging nicely behind the formidable targets that had been set for viewers progress. To make sooner viewers beneficial properties, he’ll want one thing extra radical.

One choice can be to show Twitter right into a platform, making it a central repository for tweets that others might faucet into. That is an concept that harks again to Twitter’s earliest days, when the corporate briefly pursued a platform technique. If different corporations introduced their very own algorithms to bear on Twitter’s content material, presenting it in numerous methods for their very own audiences, it would broaden the market extra quickly than Twitter might do alone.

A platform strategy might additionally go some solution to resolving Twitter’s moderation drawback. Teams of customers might tackle the job of moderating discussions on matters they’re concerned about, as they already do on Reddit. Or different corporations that construct their very own providers on the Twitter platform might assume the duty, devising completely different ranges of moderation to go well with the actual audiences they’re making an attempt to draw.

Would Musk again an concept like this? For now, the one certain factor is that he’s taking Twitter again to the drafting board. The repute of the period’s most profitable entrepreneur is using on the end result.

richard.waters@ft.com