Twitter hysteria over Musk ownership has advisers reassessing value of the platform

As the $44 billion acquisition sparks extreme reactions for and against the new owner, fintwit considers whether tweeting is still worth all the fuss.

After Elon Musk marked his acquisition of Twitter this week by firing several top executives, fans and critics of the multibillionaire are using the social media platform to respectively praise and condemn the $44 billion deal.

With some threatening to leave the platform for good and others celebrating the polarizing chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla for promising to enable free speech, those folks who embrace the colloquialism of “fintwit” are mostly recommending just chilling.

“I know there is a lot of controversy around Elon Musk, and many people are fearful that his ownership will fundamentally change the nature of Twitter, but I tend to adopt a wait-and-see view,” said Samantha Russell, chief evangelist at FMG Suite.

“I like using Twitter to engage with the fintwit community, and it is also a great platform to learn from other content creators,” she said.

Russell said she isn’t worried about the potential impact of changes related to Musk’s ownership “because if the platform changes substantially into a place that is no longer useful, or a place people want to spend their time, then they will shift to another social platform.”

Tyrone Ross, CEO and co-founder of Turnqey Labs, is also taking a relaxed perspective and looking at the Musk influence from both sides of the fence.

“I’m not as excited as other people and am a little torn,” Ross said. “Elon to me is an incredible CEO and visionary, but cutting off the head [by firing executives] the minute you take control is a bit alarming. I will say if he gets rid of the bots and spam, that would be a good thing, as well as making it open source.”

There are plenty of reasons to expect the Twitter acquisition, which has been batted around since it was first announced in April, to introduce some disruption on the popular platform. For starters, Musk is expected to allow former President Trump back onto the platform after he was banned in January 2021.

But from a pure functionality standpoint, those in the financial services community who are actively using Twitter say that at least for now, the platform continues to have value.

“There are more questions than answers at this point, and I plan on continuing to use Twitter as I always have and am cautiously optimistic that the platform will get better in the coming months,” said Shane Sideris, managing partner at Synchronous Advisors.

“Only time will tell if the changes made to the platform are positive or negative from the user perspective,” Sideris said. “It’s important to not underestimate Elon, since he has a unique ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible and help make meaningful progress for society. But he can also be a divisive character at times, so I hope he doesn’t cause any of my favorite Twitter follows to leave the platform.”

Vance Barse, founder of Your Dedicated Fiduciary, is viewing the ownership change in more practical terms.

“I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to clean house and provide users with features we’ve been asking for, namely an edit button for our tweets,” he said.

While Twitter users like Barse readily acknowledge the challenges of navigating the darker side of the platform in terms of extreme views on just about any topic imaginable, he said he still finds value in connecting with media and following macroeconomic trends.

“To me, Twitter is a think tank for all things financial services,” Barse said. “I don’t have to go deep in the weeds on any other platform; I can go to Twitter and search hashtags or scroll through the feeds of people I follow.”

Having a strategy and avoiding public conflicts is key to success on social media platforms like Twitter, said April Rudin, president and founder of The Rudin Group.

“Twitter is just a social media platform, and financial advisers should be thinking about having a strategy for why they’re on there and what they hope to accomplish,” Rudin said. “It’s part of a marketing activity, and when you think of it that way it has nothing to do with Elon Musk.”

Robert Sofia, CEO of Snappy Kraken, agrees that worrying about whoever owns the platform is mostly a waste of time and energy.

“Social media is merely a tool for communication,” he said. “All research shows that the most effective channels are email and text messaging. Very few advisers are getting great results from Twitter. So frankly, I don’t think advisers should be wasting time thinking about this.”

That’s pretty much where Josh Brown is when it comes to Twitter. The CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management was an early adapter of social media but has mostly been off Twitter for more than a year, opting instead to use the LinkedIn and Instagram platforms.

“I think Twitter is a dying platform,” Brown said. “There’s very little engagement compared to what it used to be. There’s maybe 100 to 150 people who dominate the majority of the discourse and if you’re not one of those people, you’re just screaming into the void.”