Elon Musk's Acquisition of Twitter

In October of 2022, Elon Musk became the owner and CEO of Twitter after acquiring the social media company for $44 billion. This is a timeline of events leading up to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and the changes he has implemented under his leadership. In September of 2020, Musk announced his resignation as CEO of Tesla, due to disagreements with the board of directors over the direction of the company. In October of 2020, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced his resignation, due to disagreements with Musk over the direction of the company. In November of 2020, Twitter’s chief of staff also resigned. In December of 2020, Musk announced his offer to buy Twitter for $54.20 billion. In January of 2021, Musk becomes the CEO and owner of Twitter. On October 22, 2020, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he was terminating his company's plans to acquire the social media platform, citing Twitter's refusal to provide data on bot accounts. Twitter's chairman, Bret Taylor, responded by saying that the board plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement. Musk then challenged former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a public debate about spam accounts and polled his followers on whether they believe less than 5% of Twitter's daily active users are fake. In a later tweet, Musk explained that acquiring Twitter is part of a larger goal to create an "everything" app called "X", saying that buying Twitter would be an accelerant to achieving this goal. Musk buys Twitter and immediately fires several high-ranking employees. He then reportedly orders the remaining staff to work 12-hour shifts in order to launch a new verification system within a week. After that, Musk allegedly lays off half of Twitter's employees as part of a cost-cutting measure. Finally, a report surfaces that he is considering charging users to pay to remain verified. Musk also reportedly plans to offer verification checkmarks through Twitter Blue at a price of $19.99 per month. Musk has been known to be very critical of his employees. In a recent incident, he fired several employees for expressing negative opinions about him in a Slack channel. This legal battle between Twitter and Musk has come to an end, with the judge dismissing the lawsuit. Musk has also been vocal about his opinions on Twitter's microservices "bloatware". He claims that it isn't necessary for the site to work and has announced Twitter is turning it off. This has caused an estimated 80% of contract employees to be fired without formal notice. Musk has also announced a new "Blue Verified" program that will launch on November 29. This program is designed to make sure that only verified accounts are able to use the features of Twitter. Musk reportedly believes that Twitter doesn't have the cash flow to survive without this program.

(source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-a-timeline-of-events/470927/)