Elon Musk's Cryptic 'D' Tweet Practically Blew Up Twitter It only takes a consonant to start a Twitter fire. Take it from billionaire Elon Musk.
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There's Jack Black's Tenacious D and then there's Elon Musk's mysterious "D." The two are worlds apart. Or are they? No one knows for sure, except Tesla Motors' eccentric billionaire founder, who, by the way, hopes to colonize Mars to save humanity from extinction. No, really.
About time to unveil the D and something else pic.twitter.com/qp23yi59i6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2014
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Musk, somewhat of a riddle in his own right, sparked a wild speculation frenzy when he tweeted these nine enigmatic, unpunctuated words last night: "About time to unveil the D and something else." The vaguebook-style teaser tweet, which included a dark, Batman-evocative image of the front end of a vehicle emblazoned with the date Oct. 9, 2014, stoked rumors that the luxe electric car company could be on the verge of unveiling a new product.
As all manner of inquisitive, hilarious and downright crude reply tweets piled up by the thousands (they're still stacking up like crazy), international headlines about the ambivalent tweet spiraled out onto the interwebs. From the Washington Post to the Daily Mail and every publication in between, everyone's gazing into their crystal conjecture balls, attempting to decode what Musk meant and what it might mean for Tesla's future.
@elonmusk I think you could probably wordsmith the phrasing of "unveil the D" a bit more and revisit this tweet. But congrats!
— ???? (@anildash) October 2, 2014
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Maybe Musk intended the lone D as in the first letter of "dual motor" system, The Wall Street Journal hypothesized, the feature the SpaceX founder and original PayPal mafia member promised the imminent Tesla Model X sport-utility vehicle would boast. Or, perhaps the single letter is a clue about an upcoming Tesla all-wheel-drive offering. Who knows.
As it turns out, the mystery "D" wasn't supposed to stand alone in the first place. Just two hours after rocking the Internet with his original ambiguous tweet, Musk fired off another tweet, this time reacting to the nonstop Twitter typhoon his illusive earlier tweet set off. Barely clearing up the matter, it read, "I love the Internet. Comments had me literally ROFL. No, it wasn't intentional. Glad I didn't mention the other letter!"
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I love the Internet. Comments had me literally ROFL. No, it wasn't intentional. Glad I didn't mention the other letter!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2014
Whichever other letter Musk accidentally omitted (or not) doesn't really matter, does it? One letter alone packed enough provocative punch to give Tesla (TSLA) shares a sweet nudge upward. Right now they're trading up by about 6 percent.
Related: Trouble for Tesla? Stock Falls on Analyst Concerns.