By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com -- Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) stock was looking to extend its gains Tuesday, boosted by the news that Elon Musk is joining the company’s board.
Disclosures that the Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO had taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter had sent shares of the micro-blogging site over 27% higher at close Monday. They are up 7% in premarket today.
“I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted.
“He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!”
Musk has over 80.4 million followers on Twitter and tweets often and daily, using the platform to even make stock-price-sensitive announcements, conduct polls and attend to grievances of Tesla users.
Musk has lately been critical of Twitter and accused it of not adhering to principles of free speech.
In a poll today, without naming Twitter, Musk asked followers, “Do you want an edit button?” With more than 11 hours to go and more than 3 million voting so far in the poll, more than 73% said “yes”.