Elon Musk is on its longest unpublished stretch on Twitter in nearly five years, a nine-day hiatus that comes amid tumultuous efforts to complete its planned $ 44 billion deal to buy the platform.
The billionaire CEO of Tesla Inc. TSLA,
last posted on June 21, marking Thursday as the most widespread silence since October 2017. Normally a serial tweeter has not spent more than six days without tweeting since January 2018, according to an analysis by data from Wall Street Journal tweets. Since then there have been a number of four-day breaks, the last one last January, according to the analysis.
Musk’s breakup on Twitter follows a recent period in which he was especially active on the platform, with a steady stream of posts about the deal, in which he has talked about his criticisms of the company and its policies, as well as of their plans. Of the 10 weeks with the most tweets from Musk since he joined the platform more than a decade ago, five have arrived since April 1st. Musk’s large stake in Twitter Inc. TWTR,
it was made public on April 4 and reached its agreement to acquire it on April 25.
It could not be determined why Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, is not on Twitter. He has long used the platform as the main channel of communication on a variety of topics, from rocket launches by SpaceX, to a question about cheese, to expressing views on US politics. Unlike most users with large followers, it often reacts to or responds to the posts of others.
Musk’s team has told people involved in the Twitter acquisition that he has recently been less available because he has been dealing with personal issues, according to someone familiar with the matter.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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