Visualizing 1,000 Years of England’s Kings and Queens

An Evaluation of Elon Musk’s Complete Twitter Feed

Elon Musk is understood for a lot of issues, however one in every of his most buzzworthy claims to fame is his on-line Twitter presence.

Due to its candid nature, Musk’s Twitter feed offers the general public with a singular alternative to catch an unfiltered look into his eccentric thoughts.

- Advertisement -

What can we be taught from an in-depth take a look at Elon Musk’s Twitter feed? What topics does he concentrate on essentially the most, and the way has his Twitter use modified over the previous decade?

We sifted via his total tweet historical past to seek out out.

Why Trouble?

To achieve a high-level understanding of Musk’s Twitter profile, our analysis group sifted via his total Twitter feed and compiled 15,000 of his tweets right into a complete dataset.

- Advertisement -

Why go to all the hassle? Listed here are a couple of explanation why we spent months sifting via Elon Musk’s Twitter feed:

• Folks care about what he has to say: Musk has over 77 million followers on Twitter, and his account is presently the eleventh most adopted (coming in between Ellen DeGeneres and Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India). Even run-of-the-mill replies to common Twitter customers obtain 1000’s of shares, likes, and feedback. Clearly, individuals are keen on his concepts and interactions.
• Musk tweets usually, and candidly: Lately, it’s not unusual for Musk to share greater than 30 tweets in a single day. And his Twitter conversations cowl a variety of matters, from severe conversations about technical points of his merchandise to lighthearted memes. That is extremely uncommon for an individual in his place.
• A few of his tweets have had a huge impact: Elon’s tweets persistently make headlines and ruffle the feathers of huge pictures in enterprise and politics. Elon’s Twitter fingers have moved the needle on every little thing from Tesla’s inventory worth to cryptocurrency markets.
• He’s develop into a public icon: He’s presently the richest individual on the earth, and final yr, he was named Time Journal’s Individual of the 12 months. The businesses that Musk runs are additionally massively influential and disruptive. In different phrases, irrespective of how you are feeling about him personally, he’s a fairly large deal.

Due to the above, we thought digging into the depths of Elon Musk’s Twitter feed was a worthy pursuit. Beneath, we’ll get into our methodology, and the way we went about analyzing the mountains of tweets.

How We Did It: Notes on Our Methodology

As soon as we scraped a decade value of Elon Musk tweets, we dug via the information and sorted the data to reply two essential questions:

1. What are Elon Musk’s most tweeted matters?
2. How has his Twitter exercise modified over time?

- Advertisement -

To reply the primary query, we sorted Elon’s tweets into classes (primarily based on key phrases) and ranked every class primarily based on the amount of mentions.

The outcomes are visualized within the circle chart in the midst of the graphic, which exhibits Musk’s most tweeted topics over the past decade.

To reply our second query (how has Elon’s Twitter exercise modified over time) we sorted Elon’s feed into three essential matters—Tesla, SpaceX, and every little thing else—and confirmed which matters dominated his feed every year.

Primary Takeaways from the Evaluation

Maybe unsurprisingly, we discovered that the 2 essential issues Elon talks about essentially the most are Tesla and SpaceX. He’s talked about each corporations persistently over the past decade, and because the timeline exhibits, Tesla and SpaceX take turns within the highlight, relying on what’s happening for the businesses on the time.

Whereas the matters and themes of his content material have remained pretty constant, the frequency of tweets has grown over time.

Musk now makes use of Twitter very persistently, tweeting not less than as soon as on all however 14 days in 2021. His follower depend has development steadily over time too:

Because the above graphic exhibits, his follower development began to escalate between late 2017 and mid-2018 as Musk started to burst into the general public consciousness. Why? Rather a lot was occurring each personally and professionally for the busy founder:

• • December 2017: Announcement on Twitter that the Boring Firm was planning to launch a restricted version flamethrower. 20,000 models had been bought earlier than the product was discontinued.
  • February 2018: Tesla Roadster was launched into area.
  • July 2018: 12 boys and their trainer get trapped in a collapse Thailand, and Elon will get closely concerned in efforts to attempt to rescue them. This consists of a clumsy—now deleted—tweet referring to a British cave diver as a pedophile. (Musk later received a defamation case in 2019.)
  • August 2018: Elon proclaims on Twitter that he’s contemplating taking Tesla personal at $420 a share. Tesla’s share worth promptly dropped after this now notorious tweet was despatched.
  • Sept 2018: Musk seems on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and smokes weed with him. The spectacle grabs headlines after the podcast is printed.
  • From 2016 to 2018: A extremely publicized, on-again-off-again relationship with actress Amber Heard.

Irrespective of how outlandish or stunning his feedback have been, Musk’s corporations proceed to see success, and folks have continued to point out curiosity in maintaining with the founder’s ideas—and thanks memes—on Twitter.

Highlights (and Lowlights) of Musk’s Twitter Historical past

Within the subsequent part beneath, we’ll cowl a few of Elon’s most iconic Twitter moments, hand-selected by our analysis group.

The Finish of the Faux Elon Period

Elon Musk’s first actual tweet was shared in 2010. Previous to that, somebody was pretending to be him and utilizing the Twitter deal with @elonmusk to tweet random and controversial issues.

Fortunately, the imposter didn’t achieve a lot traction, and the true Elon Musk cleared the air on June 4, 2010, with a tweet asserting his genuine arrival onto the platform:

After this preliminary tweet, Musk didn’t tweet once more till the tip of 2011, although his account was nonetheless verified that yr. His Twitter exercise remained comparatively low till 2012.

A Splashdown to Bear in mind

In Could 2012, Musk went to Twitter to share his pleasure after the Dragon spacecraft efficiently returned dwelling.

This touchdown made historical past, as SpaceX grew to become the primary business spacecraft to ship cargo to the Worldwide Area Station.

The engagement on this tweet highlights how a lot bigger Musk’s viewers is at present. The tweet above, which is highlighting some very thrilling information, solely has about 350 retweets.

The Boring Firm Flamethrower

In late 2017, Musk began promoting Boring Firm merchandise, largely as a joke. However merchandise had been promoting, and Elon determined to take issues one step additional, and introduced to Twitter that he’d launch a Boring Firm flamethrower if 50,000 Boring branded hats bought:

The hats did promote out, so true to his phrase, Musk launched a restricted version flamethrower at $500 bucks apiece. All 20,000 models bought out.

The $20 Million Quip

In August 2018, Musk advised Twitter that he was contemplating taking Tesla personal, at $420 a share.

This tweet was a cheeky reference to marijuana, nevertheless it ended up costing a fortune. The SEC sued him with fraudulent costs, claiming this irresponsible tweet misled traders.

He ended up paying hundreds of thousands in fines, and needed to step down as Tesla’s chairman because of the drama.

Candid COVID Opinions

Musk hasn’t been shy about sharing his ideas on the worldwide pandemic. On March 6, 2020, he tweeted “the coronavirus panic is dumb.” Since then, he’s been vocal about his mistrust in antigen checks, and isn’t afraid to share his frustrations round lockdowns along with his followers:

He’s additionally mentioned that the virus isn’t that lethal and that COVID-19 associated deaths had been inflated as a result of medical doctors had been wrongfully attributing deaths to the virus as an alternative of different causes.

Turning into the World’s Richest Human

In 2021, Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos to develop into the richest individual on the earth. His response was fairly understated. In response to a tweet from @teslaownersSV sharing the information, he merely mentioned“how unusual.”

From there, he tweeted:

Musk continues to be presently the richest individual on the planet as of this text’s publication date, with a web value of $213 billion.

Bitcoin Enhance

Elon Musk’s foray into Bitcoin boosterism ramped up on January 29, 2021, when he added “#bitcoin” to his Twitter profile web page, a transfer that appeared to have an effect on the worth of BTC.

Days later, Musk introduced that Tesla acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoin, with plans to simply accept it as fee.

The information prompted the worth of Bitcoin to leap 17% to $44,000, a report excessive on the time. Bitcoin remained within the highlight via the yr because the cryptocurrency continued to assemble assist from main monetary establishments.

Simply days prior, Musk additionally added gasoline to the speculative fireplace surrounding the GameStop inventory. By merely tweeting the phrase “Gamestonk” paired with a hyperlink to Reddit’s notorious r/wallstreetbets, GME’s worth exploded greater than 150% increased.

The Multi-Billion Greenback Query

After dealing with backlash over his important stockpile of wealth, Musk turned to Twitter to ask customers if he ought to promote 10% of his Tesla inventory with a purpose to pay taxes.

Nearly all of Twitter customers voted sure, and the billionaire really adopted via and bought greater than $16 billion value of Tesla inventory.

Reconnecting Ukraine

In late February, as Russia launched its offensive in Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation known as the SpaceX founder out on Twitter, asking for assist.

Musk would reply inside 24 hours, and shortly after, Fedorov would tweet a photograph of Starlink terminals arriving safely within the nation.