Elon Musk offered to outright buy Twitter this week, and users of the social media giant are predicting that, if the sale goes through, the platform will go the way of another once-popular social media site: MySpace.
Early Thursday morning, Musk — who became Twitter’s second-largest shareholder earlier this week — put out a $43 billion offer to completely take over the site, valuing each share at $54.20. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” Musk claimed in his official offer filing to the SEC.
Naturally, the news created a flurry on Twitter, with many people joking that the platform will see a mass exodus of users, similar to MySpace in the early 2000s.
“His first order of business should be to rename it to ‘MySpace 2.0’, because it’s going to die about as fast as that platform did,” one person tweeted.
Another echoed similar sentiments, writing “This place will become Myspace if Elon gets it.”
Others compared Musk’s desire to acquire Twitter, and his goals in doing so, to media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Back in 2005, News Corp., headed by Murdoch, bought MySpace for $580 million. But, in 2009, BusinessWeek reported that Murdoch was frustrated by MySpace’s rapidly declining popularity, as he hoped for the social media platform to become a distribution vehicle for Fox content. Then, in 2011, Murdoch sold MySpace for an undisclosed sum that was rumored to be somewhere around just $35 million.
“Genius Musk will do for Twitter what genius Murdoch did for MySpace,” one user suggested.
That said, some users joked that they’d actually return to MySpace if Musk’s offer were to be accepted by Twitter. You can check out more reactions to the news below.
