Will buy Twitter if Musk is having second thoughts, Snoop Dogg jokes

LOS ANGELES: Rapper Snoop Dogg has gone viral after suggesting he 'may have (to) buy Twitter now' after Tesla CEO Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover was put on pause.

The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, took his shot at becoming the next Twitter owner, jokingly tweeting about how he's going to "replace the board of directors with Jimmy from my corner Fish Fry, Tommy Chung and tha guy with the ponytail (Pete Najarian) on CNBC", reports dailymail.co.uk.

Snoop also said he'd immediately give everyone a blue checkmark, "even tha bots with 10 letters in their name that hit you in DMs (and) just say: 'Hello.' Nah, f**k those bots."

The 50-year-old singer said his 'first line of business' would be putting free internet on planes, referencing one of Musk's other business ventures Starlink, which JSX airline announced on April 21 it would be utilising to get internet on their planes in the next year.

The commodity would come free of charge, which got the singer thinking: '29 dollars for 1 hour is bulls**t.'

If Snoop Dogg was seriously about buying the social platform, the singer's offer would fall much lower than the Musk's, as the the American Song Contest co-host is only estimated to be worth about $150million compared to Musk's $240billion.

Musk, 50, threw his multi-billion deal into chaos on Friday when he announced he was 'temporarily' putting it on hold 'pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than five per cent of users.'

He linked a report from May 2 stating Twitter's calculation that bots were only a small percentage of the site's users.

Musk had said that one of his priorities would be to remove 'spam bots' from Twitter once his takeover of the company was complete.

It is not clear what the legal effect of his tweet was, and some analysts were baffled that he announced the move on Twitter rather than a regulatory filing.

The Tesla CEO did insist that he is "still committed to (the) acquisition" of the company, but seems like the billionaire may have some public competition with the singer, who tweeted 'wake n bake' just hours before jokingly announcing his business preposition.

Musk's surprise tweets early Friday sent Twitter stock plunging in the pre-market, as analysts speculated that Musk is trying to negotiate a lower price for the deal or pull out completely.

Citing a week-old regulatory filing from Twitter, Musk claimed that he wanted to pause the deal to verify that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of the company's 229 million users during the first quarter.

Backpedaling a few hours later, Musk tweeted that he was "still committed" to the acquisition.

If he walked away from the deal, Musk would likely be on the hook for a $1 billion termination fee.

Though Twitter's board agreed to the purchase last month, it still has not been approved by shareholders, and was not expected to close for at least several months.

Shares of the social media company fell as much as 25 per cent in pre-market trading this morning, continuing a massive downward trend since his takeover bid was accepted by Twitter's board on April 25.

Twitter's share price has been sinking following the April 25 announcement that Twitter's board had agreed to his buyout, when stocks closed at $51.70.

The stock closed at $45.08 on Thursday and plunged in pre-market trading Friday following Musk's tweet, dropping as much as 13 percent.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Tesla shares, against which Musk has secured $6.25 billion in funding for the acquisition, were up about 5 per cent early Friday.