
Character Limit
How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
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By:
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Kate Conger
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Ryan Mac
About this listen
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?
©2024 Kate Conger and Ryan Mac (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“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
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Story
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
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Only a few hours in
- By Cody Konior on 03-24-25
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Battle for the Bird
- Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul
- By: Kurt Wagner
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Bloomberg journalist Kurt Wagner takes you inside Twitter’s everchanging headquarters, charting its rise from flippant 140-character posts to one of the world’s most consequential tech companies. From Jack Dorsey’s triumphant return as CEO in 2015 to the rise and fall of @RealDonaldTrump to the contentious $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, Battle for the Bird exposes the messy reality and relentless challenges that come with building a global social network.
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typical left-wing BS
- By Amazon Customer on 03-09-24
By: Kurt Wagner
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Black Pill
- How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
- By: Elle Reeve
- Narrated by: Elle Reeve
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist and CNN correspondent Elle Reeve was not surprised by the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With years of in-depth research and on-the-ground investigative reporting under her belt, Reeve was aware of the preoccupations of the online far right and their journey from the computer to QAnon, militias, and racist groups. At the same time, Reeve saw a parallel growth of counterforces, with citizen vigilantes using new tools and tactics to take down the far right.
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Great story — uneven performance
- By SSG on 08-19-24
By: Elle Reeve
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Burn Book
- A Tech Love Story
- By: Kara Swisher
- Narrated by: Kara Swisher
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world. When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,” Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order.
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Let me save you 8 hours
- By Momx4 on 02-29-24
By: Kara Swisher
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Ludicrous
- The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
- By: Edward Niedermeyer
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Tesla Motors and CEO Elon Musk have become household names, shaking up the staid auto industry by creating a set of innovative electric vehicles that have wowed the marketplace and defied conventional wisdom. But behind the hype, Tesla has some serious deficiencies that raise questions about its sky-high valuation, and even its ultimate survival. In Ludicrous, journalist and auto industry analyst Edward Niedermeyer lays bare the disconnect between the popular perception of Tesla and the day-to-day realities of the company - and the cars it produces.
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Anti-Tesla and Extremely Biased
- By Jay K. on 11-04-19
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Power Play
- Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
- By: Tim Higgins
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Tesla is the envy of the automotive world. Born at the start of the millennium, it was the first car company to be valued at $1 trillion. Its CEO, the mercurial, charismatic Elon Musk has become not just a celebrity but the richest man in the world. But Tesla’s success was far from guaranteed. Founded in the 2000s, the company was built on an audacious vision. Musk and a small band of Silicon Valley engineers set out to make a car that was quicker, sexier, smoother, and cleaner than any gas-guzzler on the road.
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Good, but you've heard these stories before
- By Daniel on 08-18-21
By: Tim Higgins
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Selling Sexy
- Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon
- By: Lauren Sherman, Chantal Fernandez
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Victoria’s Secret is one of the most influential and polarizing brands to ever infiltrate the psyche of the American consumer. Almost right at its start in the late 1970s, the company developed a cult following for its glamorous catalogs. Back then, shoppers had few alternatives to the stodgy department stores that sold most of the nation’s intimate apparel. By 1982, the founders of Victoria’s Secret avoided bankruptcy by selling to Les Wexner, the fast-fashion pioneer behind the Limited, whose empire of mall brands would go on to dominate American retail for forty years.
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Better business books - read one of those
- By Customer - Reader on 02-22-25
By: Lauren Sherman, and others
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Hatching Twitter
- A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
- By: Nick Bilton
- Narrated by: Daniel May
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Twitter seems like a perfect start-up success story. In barely six years, a small group of young, ambitious programmers in Silicon Valley built an $11.5 billion business out of the ashes of a failed podcasting company. Today Twitter boasts more than 200 million active users and has affected business, politics, media, and other fields in innumerable ways.
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A Shakespearean Drama
- By Francesca on 11-09-13
By: Nick Bilton
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Owned
- How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left
- By: Eoin Higgins
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.
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More of a screed than an analysis
- By Jamie on 03-01-25
By: Eoin Higgins
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The Water Will Come
- Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
- By: Jeff Goodell
- Narrated by: Ian Ferguson
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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What if Atlantis wasn't a myth but an early precursor to a new age of great flooding? Across the globe, scientists and civilians alike are noticing rapidly rising sea levels and higher and higher tides pushing more water directly into the places we live, from our most vibrant, historic cities to our last remaining traditional coastal villages. With each crack in the great ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctica and each tick upward of Earth's thermometer, we are moving closer to the brink of broad disaster.
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Well-intentioned but amateurish
- By R. P. on 10-10-19
By: Jeff Goodell
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Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
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Powerful and Important work.
- By Frank Nance on 02-28-25
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Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran.
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A Triumphant Work -Puts It All Together With Laser Clarity
- By Sjhoffman on 09-19-24
By: Anne Applebaum
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Hubris Maximus
- The Shattering of Elon Musk
- By: Faiz Siddiqui
- Narrated by: André Santana
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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At a moment when America’s tech gods are more influential than ever, Hubris Maximus is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of lionizing magnetic leaders. Washington Post journalist Faiz Siddiqui offers a gripping, detailed portrait of a singularly messy and lucrative period in Musk’s career, as well as a case study in the power of using one’s platform to shape the public narrative in a world that can’t turn away from its screens.
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intriguing
- By Avox on 04-24-25
By: Faiz Siddiqui
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The Money Trap
- Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble
- By: Alok Sama
- Narrated by: Raza Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Veteran Morgan Stanley banker Alok Sama thought he'd seen it all. Then he found himself chief dealmaker at the most influential technology investor in the world—SoftBank, the backer of Arm Holdings, Yahoo, Nvidia, TikTok, Uber, T-Mobile, Alibaba and WeWork. The Money Trap is Sama’s thrilling, stranger-than-fiction personal odyssey featuring his experiences alongside SoftBank’s iconic founder, Masayoshi Son, a visionary maverick who wants to be remembered as “the crazy guy who bet on the future” and whose mission is “happiness for everyone.”
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Finally a book I can recommend
- By Fadi Awni Abu-Shamat on 01-22-25
By: Alok Sama
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SpaceX
- Elon Musk and the Final Frontier
- By: Brad Bergan
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The private space industry’s consensus leader, SpaceX, headed by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, was worth an estimated $187 billion in 2023 while taking on more roles—flying cargo, supplies, and astronauts to outer space, and even playing a central role as rocket supplier to NASA’s Artemis moon mission. In SpaceX: Elon Musk and the Final Frontier, science journalist and editor Brad Bergan tells the story of SpaceX. Bergan examines every detail surrounding SpaceX’s efforts to accelerate humankind’s exploration and understanding of outer space.
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Nothing new
- By mooreaa on 02-11-25
By: Brad Bergan
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The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
By: Keach Hagey
What listeners say about Character Limit
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- exBFF
- 10-01-24
We thought we knew…we really didn’t
Such a thrilling, engaging book. Like so many, i fell in love with early Twitter and have since followed its destruction at the hands of one man.
He not only blew $44 billion and disrupted countless lives in his insatiable need for attention, he is also solely the course of most of his problems.
I’m generally not a proponent of schadenfreude, but if any one person deserves it, it’s this guy.
He will cry into his billions, but I’m not sure he will ever find the universal heraldry he so desperately wants.
This king has no clothes.
Kate and Ryan have truly created a masterpiece. I have a hard time believing imagining anything being a more definitive work about the particular period in Twitters saga.
Bravo for a remarkable book. I genuinely couldn’t put it down. It’s easily my favorite book of the year!
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- Mandy
- 10-30-24
Fascinating
This is a blow by blow of Elon musks takeover of twitter. It’s petty dry reporting but it’s a fascinating story. The reader is excellent.
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- Noel Poler
- 09-30-24
What a takedown
The most brutal takedown of Elon Musk, truly awesome story and storytelling, very fast paced, like being a fly on the wall to the acquisition and fall of Twitter
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- Mom in Lakewood
- 09-30-24
Incredible reporting
I don’t know how late and Ryan got the access they did, but this is simply an extraordinary account. Brilliant.
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- Cosmo
- 10-11-24
Lost in Space
Compelling investigative journalism, The authors connect dots that provide insights into an individual filled with contradictions. Notably obsessed by megalomania, with the luxury of wealth to entertain absurdities and eccentricities we receive insights into the psychosis of a highly influential individual. It reveals the consequences of a world out of balance, the vast chasm dividing America and its infectious nature on the global community.
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- Turing Machine
- 09-22-24
Not sure this is the best book to be narrated
I like the book, especially its writing and details, but am not sure this book is suitable for audio book. Because the too-detailed depiction might be a distraction for understanding of the story. I imagine reading it must be different.
And I just wish the narration of the book could be more colorful. It was too pale in this book.
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- guerillaw
- 03-15-25
Crucial reporting and insight
It is impossible not to lend credibility to the amazing reporting and insights offered by this book because if if it wasn’t spot on in truthful, there is no doubt there would already be lawsuits flying everywhere.
This was always a critical story to tell about an important historical figure in his most pivotal public moment; now as he is more central to the American experience than ever these reporters work is an invaluable must-read.
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- eric j rotzoll
- 09-22-24
Revealing
This is an amazing story of vanity, hubris and a deranged man. i deleted my Twitter account after this.
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- HM
- 09-22-24
What far money can buy and destroy.
To show how inhuman Elon can be. How he used his money to control people lives.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-03-25
Seems very detailed
The performance was pretty good and I think the authors did a pretty good job compiling what appears to be a large series of secret meetings and first hand situations. Book also doesn’t overstay its welcome by trying to overstay its welcome by explaining the start of twitter too much. Only criticism is conflating the antisemitism of the internet writ large with the displacement of Palestinians and claiming that Netenyahu is a “beleaguered leader” and not a war criminal.
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