The Acquisition of Twitter
Definition:
Twitter is a social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social
media websites and one of the most visited. Users can share short text messages,
images, and videos in short posts commonly known as "tweets" or "retweets”,
officially "post" or "repost", like other users' content. The platform also
includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities,
a chatbot, job search and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on
context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature.
Creation:
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone,
and Evan Williams, and was launched in July of that year. Twitter grew quickly; by
2012 more than 100 million users produced 340 million tweets per day.
Twitter, Inc., was based in San Francisco, California, and had more than 25 offices
around the world. A signature characteristic of the service initially was that posts
were required to be brief. Posts were initially limited to 140 characters, which was
changed to 280 characters in 2017. The limitation was removed for subscribed
accounts in 2023. Most tweets are produced by a minority of users. In 2020, it was
estimated that approximately 48 million accounts (15% of all accounts) were run
by internet bots rather than humans.
Acquisition:
On April 14, 2022, businessman Elon Musk started the acquisition of Twitter. Musk
said he intended to buy Twitter to build X, an application he had been developing
since 2018. Musk begun buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming
its largest shareholder by April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Musk declined
to join the Twitter´s board of directors an offer he initially accepted, because he had
the plan to make an unsolicited offer to purchase the company, to which Twitter's
board responded with a poison pill strategy to resist a hostile takeover.
Nevertheless, they unanimously accepted Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion on
April 25. Musk said that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, such
as making its algorithms open-source and promoting free speech.
Musk closed the acquisition deal on October 28, immediately becoming Twitter's
new owner and CEO. Twitter was taken private and merged into a new parent
company named X Corp. Musk promptly fired several top executives, including the
previous CEO. Musk has since proposed several reforms to Twitter and laid off
Definition:
Twitter is a social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social
media websites and one of the most visited. Users can share short text messages,
images, and videos in short posts commonly known as "tweets" or "retweets”,
officially "post" or "repost", like other users' content. The platform also
includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities,
a chatbot, job search and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on
context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature.
Creation:
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone,
and Evan Williams, and was launched in July of that year. Twitter grew quickly; by
2012 more than 100 million users produced 340 million tweets per day.
Twitter, Inc., was based in San Francisco, California, and had more than 25 offices
around the world. A signature characteristic of the service initially was that posts
were required to be brief. Posts were initially limited to 140 characters, which was
changed to 280 characters in 2017. The limitation was removed for subscribed
accounts in 2023. Most tweets are produced by a minority of users. In 2020, it was
estimated that approximately 48 million accounts (15% of all accounts) were run
by internet bots rather than humans.
Acquisition:
On April 14, 2022, businessman Elon Musk started the acquisition of Twitter. Musk
said he intended to buy Twitter to build X, an application he had been developing
since 2018. Musk begun buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming
its largest shareholder by April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Musk declined
to join the Twitter´s board of directors an offer he initially accepted, because he had
the plan to make an unsolicited offer to purchase the company, to which Twitter's
board responded with a poison pill strategy to resist a hostile takeover.
Nevertheless, they unanimously accepted Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion on
April 25. Musk said that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, such
as making its algorithms open-source and promoting free speech.
Musk closed the acquisition deal on October 28, immediately becoming Twitter's
new owner and CEO. Twitter was taken private and merged into a new parent
company named X Corp. Musk promptly fired several top executives, including the
previous CEO. Musk has since proposed several reforms to Twitter and laid off
