Character Limit - by Kate Conger & Ryan Mac (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media--where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before. While its founder had idealistically dreamed of building a "digital town square," he detested Wall Street and never focused on building a profitable business. This is the defining story of our time told with uncommon style and peerless rigor. In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost?"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews

"Riveting . . . Character Limit offers a telling lesson in the cost of getting everything you want." --The Washington Post

"You couldn't hope for a better ringside seat on the unfolding drama . . . [Character Limit] is a triumph." --The Guardian

"Masterful in how it paints a picture and puts you in the room with the famous entrepreneur . . . Character Limit is a page turner." --Forbes

Rising star New York Times technology reporters, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, tell for the first time the full and shocking inside story of Elon Musk's unprecedented takeover of Twitter and the forty-four-billion-dollar deal's seismic political, social, and financial fallout

The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media--where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before. While its founder had idealistically dreamed of building a "digital town square," he detested Wall Street and never focused on building a profitable business.

Musk joined the platform in 2010 and, by 2022, had become one of the site's most influential users, hooking over 80 million followers with a mix of provocations, promotion of his companies, and attacks on his enemies. To Musk, Twitter -- once known for its almost absolute commitment to free speech -- had badly lost its way. He blamed it for the proliferation of what he called the "woke mind virus" and claimed that the survival of democracy and the human race itself depended on the future of the site. In January of 2022, Musk began secretly accumulating Twitter stock. By April, he was its largest shareholder, and soon after, made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for the unimaginable sum of $44 billion dollars. Backed into a corner, Twitter's board accepted his offer--but Musk quickly changed his mind, forcing Twitter to sue him to close the deal in October. The richest man on earth controlled one of the most powerful media platforms in the world--but at what price? Before long Twitter would be gone for good, replaced by something radically different, as Musk remade the company in his own image from the ground up.

The story of the showdown between Musk and Twitter and his eventual takeover of the company is unlike anything in business or media that has come before. In vivid, cinematic detail, Conger and Mac follow the inner workings of the company as Musk lays siege to it, first from the outside as one of its most vocal users, and then finally from within as a contentious and mercurial leader. Musk has shared some of his version of events, but Conger and Mac have uncovered the full story through exclusive interviews, unreported documents, and internal recordings at Twitter following the billionaire's takeover. With unparalleled sources from within and around the company, they provide a revelatory, three-dimensional, and definitive account of what really happened when Musk showed up, spoiling for a brawl and intent on revolution, with his merciless, sycophantic cadre of lawyers, investors, and bankers.

This is the defining story of our time told with uncommon style and peerless rigor. In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost?

Review Quotes

"Conger and Mac, reporters at The New York Times, put their investigative skills and many years covering the tech sector to effective use in producing this astonishingly intimate, minute-by-minute account of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter in 2022 . . . The result is a hair-raising tale that will surely be the definitive account of how Musk 'destroyed' the platform that is no longer Twitter . . . The authors completed the book before Musk made massive contributions to the campaign of Donald Trump and won a major role in the new administration. But the similarities in character and behavior between the two men leap from nearly every page. Both are impulsive, have a desperate need for attention, are notably susceptible to flattery, demand absolute loyalty, are intolerant of criticism, and have little awareness of what they may not know." --Foreign Affairs

"Riveting . . . Character Limit offers a treasure trove of answers regarding Elon Musk's somewhat shadowy acquisition of [Twitter], both in terms of the financials and his motivation . . . Having focused on the exploits of Musk for over a decade, Conger and Mac draw on more than 150 hours' worth of interviews conducted with a cadre of Musk's confidants, rivals, employees and peers to paint an eye-opening picture of his tumultuous tenure as the controversial CEO of three of the world's most talked-about companies . . . Alternating between delicious gossip and harrowing warnings about the power possessed by a worrisome few, Conger and Mac's reconstruction of Musk's time at Twitter often paints the billionaire as a tantrum-prone narcissist who always gets his way, whatever the costs . . . Character Limit offers a telling lesson in the cost of getting everything you want." --The Washington Post

"How can you make a story compelling when each step along the way has already been so heavily covered? Conger and Mac's answer to that is their astonishing ability to take the reader into almost every room that mattered during the contentious $44bn acquisition . . . there is no doubt that Conger and Mac enjoyed unmatched access to a range of characters from all sides. You couldn't hope for a better ringside seat on the unfolding drama . . . As a retelling of exactly what happened and what it felt like to be there, it is a triumph." --The Guardian

"If you're at all interested in what went down, I can't recommend it enough. It's a well-written, deeply researched book with all sorts of details about the lead-up to the acquisition, the acquisition itself, and the aftermath of Elon owning Twitter. Even if you followed the story closely as it played out (as I did), the book is a worthwhile read . . . " --Techdirt

"The book is masterful in how it paints a picture and puts you in the room with the famous entrepreneur . . . Character Limit is a page turner." --Forbes

"Engrossing, precise . . . New York Times reporters Conger and Mac collaborate successfully on an ambitious narrative capturing how Musk engineered Twitter's downfall, set against the vast financial stakes and dehumanizing aspects of the tech economy . . . Compelling fusion of business history and worrisome social narrative." --Kirkus, starred review

"The definitive account of how the world's richest man, in a fit of unbridled vanity and arrogance, took over and destroyed our digital town square." --John Carreyrou, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Blood​

"I found Character Limit astonishing. Kate Conger and Ryan Mac's meticulous, comprehensive reporting turns an opaque mess brutally transparent. Even leaving aside the ludicrous confederacy of financial instruments that made it possible for a single man to buy Twitter, this book, simply in terms of the sheer cringe and self-humiliation on display in every paragraph, adds up to one of the strongest arguments possible for why billionaires should not exist." --Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror

"Character Limit is the definitive business book of the 2020s--a meticulously reported tale of tech-industry hubris, narcissism, and egomania collapsing in on itself at the end of the ZIRP era. Alternately shocking, thrilling, tragic, and hilarious, it perfectly encapsulates the entrenched and warring cultures of Silicon Valley, the deceptively thorny problems of the social-media age, and the fine line between stupidity and genius straddled by a generation of tech entrepreneurs. This book will be read for decades to come, both as the definitive documentation of the end of an era, and as a how-not-to manual for future generations of managers and investors, not to mention M&A bankers and lawyers." --Max Read, author of the newsletter Read Max

"Conger and Mac have written an engrossing and detailed history, not just of Elon Musk, but of how we got to a place where the world's richest man wants to buy the world's biggest megaphone. This is a story about power, yes, but it's also about how the corrosion of online life and the addictions of social media can come for us all, even the richest man in the world." --Jay Caspian Kang, author of The Loneliest Americans

"Character Limit is a masterclass in investigative reporting. Mac and Conger's meticulous research provides readers with an unflinching and intimate portrait of Musk's chaotic decision making and high-stakes power plays, and the far-reaching impact of his reckless actions and ethical lapses on users and society at large. This gripping exposé reveals previously unreported insights into the acquisition, challenging the mainstream narrative of Musk as a visionary tech genius and revealing how he has upended one of the world's most influential social media platforms. With vivid prose, captivating narrative storytelling, and insightful analysis, Character Limit will be the tech book of the year, and is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the intersection of technology, business, and culture--and anyone who seeks to understand the true cost of innovation without accountability." --Taylor Lorenz, author of Extremely Online

"A gripping, behind-the-scenes account of the chaos unleashed when the world's richest man bought one of its most influential social media platforms. Through fly-on-the-wall reporting, Character Limit takes readers inside Elon Musk's tumultuous Twitter takeover and the disruption of a company, an industry, and the online public square. What a wild ride." --Bradley Hope, New York Times bestselling author of Billion Dollar Whale

About the Author

Kate Conger is a technology reporter for The New York Times. She writes about X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and its owner, Elon Musk. In more than a decade of covering the tech industry, she has written about the underground world of hackers, the use of artificial intelligence in autonomous weapons, and labor uprisings in the gig economy. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ryan Mac is a Los Angeles-based technology reporter for The New York Times. He has spent more than a decade reporting on wealth and power in Silicon Valley, first on staff at Forbes, and then at BuzzFeed News, where he was a senior reporter. He led the outlet's deep reporting on Facebook, which garnered a 2019 Mirror Award and a 2020 George R. Polk Award.