Elon Musk paid $44 billion for a media property

Twitter's most precious asset isn't its technology, its business, its data, or its employees. What makes Twitter unique is the attention it has won from the media profession — and that is what Elon Musk bought for $44 billion. Journalists fell in love with Twitter because it's a fast, open medium for sharing news. Then their presence on the platform transformed what was once just a buzzy, ephemeral social network into a conduit for world leaders, public institutions and social debates. In announcing that his offer to buy the company had been accepted, Musk called Twitter "the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated." Town squares are generally run by town governments. When private companies own them, we call them "malls." By the numbers, in the Big Tech wars Twitter is only a bit player. Musk's purchase of Twitter, then, is less a big move in the tech industry's platform wars than the latest instance of a digital billionaire buying up a media institution.