Twitter Acquisition: The Story Behind Elon Musk’s Ownership

Now that the dust about the Twitter acquisition has finally settled let’s take a closer look at this deal. When did talks about the buyout start, and how did the negotiations between Twitter’s board and Elon Musk proceed? Why did Musk want to acquire the social media platform in the first place?

This article covers the entire buyout process and highlights key moments. It also provides insight into all the investors who provided Musk with the funds to acquire the platform. Keep reading to learn about the Twitter, aka X, buyout story.

Twitter Mergers and Acquisitions: Starting From Musk’s Interest Until the Buyout

Like several Twitter veterans, Musk joined the social media platform in June 2009. Although the account published several tweets after joining Twitter, it wasn’t from the billionaire. He clarified this in a post in June 2010.

The first time he mentioned purchasing Twitter was in December 2017. It was a response to other Twitter acquisitions and mentions about buying the platform. However, nothing happened after this tweet for several years.

Musk’s Transition From Twitter User to Largest Shareholder and Initial Offer

Here’s the series of events highlighting the Elon Musk Twitter acquisition. This is his journey from just another Twitter user to the platform’s largest shareholder:

• The real story starts in January 2022, when Musk bought several Twitter shares. This activity continued for a while, and by March 2022, he had more than a 5% stake in the platform. However, the public wasn’t aware of this activity, as he didn’t inform the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
• In April 2022, he announced that he had a 9.2% stake in Twitter. He overtook Vanguard, an investment management company that held 8.8% of Twitter’s shares. This changed by mid-April, as Vanguard increased its stake to 10.3%. 
• After Musk’s shareholder status became public, Twitter formally invited Musk to join the platform’s board. Although he agreed, he changed his mind. 
• On April 14, 2022, he offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, or around $43 billion. This was approximately 38% higher than the April 1, 2022 closing stock price.

Musk’s Legal Tussle With Twitter Leading to the Buyout

However, things didn’t go as planned after his initial offer. The following section highlights the events that occurred before the buyout:

• Twitter opposed the buyout and implemented the poison pill defense to discourage Musk from acquiring Twitter via hostile takeover. This move allows shareholders other than the buyer to purchase additional shares at a significantly lower price.
• On April 21, 2022, Musk stated that he secured $46.5 billion to finance the acquisition.
• Finally, Twitter relented and accepted the offer on April 25, 2022. The social media platform announced the same in a press release.
• Musk sold his Tesla stock worth $8.5 billion on April 29, 2022. He also acquired financing from several individuals and financial institutions.
• On May 6, 2022, he shared his pitch deck, highlighting his ambitious plans. He wanted to increase the platform’s revenue by fourfold by 2028.
• However, Musk changed his mind on May 13, 2022. He stated that he doubts Twitter’s claim about the number of bot and spam accounts on the platform.
• Things took a turn for the worse on July 8, 2022, as the billionaire investor wanted to cancel the deal. The reason was due to inaccuracies in the number of fake accounts on Twitter.
• Twitter takes Elon Musk to court on July 12, 2022, by suing him in Delaware’s Chancery Court. The social media giant wanted him to go through with the deal.
• On October 6, 2022, Kathleen St. J. McCormick, the judge overseeing the lawsuit, paused the case. She gave Twitter and Musk time to agree and complete the purchase by October 28, 2022.
• Musk finally gave in and bought Twitter for $44 billion.

One of his first moves was firing Parag Agrawal, former chief executive officer (CEO).

A Sneak Peek Into Musk’s Pitch Deck

A pitch deck is a presentation that provides investors with everything they need to know about a business. Musk prepared a similar document, highlighting his plans for Twitter. Here’s a closer look at what the CEO of SpaceX wants to do with the social media platform:

• In 2021, Twitter generated $5 billion in revenue, and most of its capital came from advertising. Musk wanted to increase this figure to more than $26 billion within six years after the buyout, i.e., 2028.
• He wanted to reduce the platform’s dependency on advertising to under 50%, as per the document. 
• He had plans to boost the platform’s total user base to 931 million.
• He wanted to introduce a payment system to add $1.3 billion to the company’s coffers by 2028.
• He planned to cut the platform’s workforce before adding thousands of employees by 2025.

How Was the Twitter Acquisition Financed

As of November 2024, Elon Musk is the richest person globally. Despite his immense wealth, he didn’t use his money to buy Twitter. Instead, he reached out to several investors and financial institutions to help him finance the deal. Here’s how Musk acquired the capital to buy Twitter and made it a private company:

• Musk did his best to provide as much money as possible for this deal. He funded $33.5 billion, more than half of his initial offer to Twitter.
• Jack Dorsey, the social media network’s co-founder, was another investor. He provided $1 billion to make the deal possible. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder, also indirectly funded $1 billion. He used the trust he manages, Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust, to provide the capital.
• The cryptocurrency exchange Binance offered $500 million as funds for the acquisition.
• Several venture capital firms, such as 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Vy Capital, provided more than $2 billion.
• Banks such as Barclays, BNP Paribas, Bank of America, Mizuho, MUFG, Morgan Stanley, and Société Générale backed the deal. These financial institutions provided $13 billion as funds.
• Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owned over $2 billion in shares with Twitter. He used his stake in the platform to help Musk buy the social media network.

Life on Twitter After the Acquisition: 10 Significant Changes on the Platform

If you compare Twitter before and after the acquisition, you’ll notice things are quite different. What changed after the Elon Musk Twitter acquisition? The following section covers all the changes introduced under the new Twitter leadership.

1. Twitter Is No Longer the Same: It’s Now X

One of the biggest changes to the platform was the rebranding of Twitter to X. Elon Musk’s fascination with this alphabet was one of the many reasons for the transformation. Moreover, he also used the rebranding of the Twitter symbol to signify the move away from its move away from a micro-blogging social network.

He wanted the platform to become a place where freedom of speech thrives. Also, he was pushing to make it an everything app, i.e., it is no longer just another social media site.

Musk claimed Twitter was appropriate when tweets couldn’t exceed 140 characters. However, this is no longer the case due to the changes he introduced. 

Another significant change was the removal of the iconic blue bird. An uppercase X took its place as the new logo. The new leadership even swapped Twitter’s logo from its San Francisco headquarters, replacing it with the platform’s new symbols. 

As part of the rebranding efforts, several terminologies are no longer the same. Here’s a list of what’s different:

• Tweet = Post
• Retweet = Repost
• Retweet with comment = Quote
• TweetDeck = X Pro
• Twitter Blue = X Premium

2. X Premium Is the Latest Subscription Service

The social media company launched Twitter Blue in June 2021, providing the following features:

• The ability to organize your saved posts via bookmark folders.
• Undo tweets if you need to make a few edits.
• Reader mode to make it easy to go through Twitter Threads.
• Customizable app icon to change how it looks on your device.
• Color themes to transform the platform’s primary colors.

After the acquisition, the platform launched Twitter Blue before changing it to X Premium. It provided the same feature set but offered the following utilities to subscribers:

• The option to reduce how many ads you see on the platform.
• Write tweets that contain up to 25,000 characters.
• Upload longer high-quality videos, especially if you’re on the web or iOS version.
• The ability to make a community and invite other Twitter users to your group.
• Edit post feature to make changes to your tweets.
• Control who can message you and reply to your posts. 
• Use X Pro to manage multiple accounts and timelines from a single dashboard.
• Access to Grok AI, the platform’s AI-powered chatbot.
• The option to earn from advertisements running in your post’s reply section. 
• Start a subscription service where your followers can sign up for exclusive content.

The social media giant also removed the legacy blue check verification requirement. The platform’s new leadership introduced a new verification system for subscribers. You’ll see a blue tick on your account page if you meet the platform’s criteria.

In October 2023, the platform introduced two additional subscription packages — Basic and Premium+. Basic is the lowest tier but offers sufficient features to change your experience.

Premium+ is the highest tier, removing ads from several sections of the site. You can also beta-test the latest features before they’re available to other users.

3. The Platform Is Moving Toward a Video-First Network

Although text-based tweets are still popular, more people are consuming video content on this platform. Thanks to the introduction of Immersive Video, you no longer have to watch videos horizontally.

When you come across a vertical video, it takes up your entire screen. In other words, you get full-screen videos. If you go through the Explore section, you’ll also see more videos on your screen.

Moreover, the platform increased the size of the videos you can upload from your device. As long as you have an iOS or a desktop computer or laptop, your videos can be 8 GB.

The platform also loops videos under 60 seconds, i.e., they’ll keep playing on your device.

4. The Social Media Company Undos the Ban on Several High-Profile Accounts

Several high-profile Twitter accounts couldn’t use the platform due to an ongoing ban from the previous leadership. Musk removed these bans and reinstated the profiles, including several far-right figures. Here are some of the accounts that are active on the platform:

• Donald Trump, former U.S President
• Babylon Bee, a right-wing media satire news and media agency
• Ye, formerly Kanye West, an American rapper
• Jordan Peterson, a psychologist and author
• Kathy Griffin, comedian

Several accounts lost access to Twitter due to policy violations. However, Musk reversed this decision.

5. Creator Ad Revenue Sharing and Subscriptions

Twitter’s acquisition helped creators, as they can use this platform to earn from their followers. One feature is Ad Revenue Sharing, which pays users based on how many views ads get from X Premium subscribers. The platform displays ads in the reply section, and people must see them to earn from the views.

Another way to generate revenue was through Creator Subscriptions. You can offer a subscription service and provide exclusive content to your subscribers. This can be one-of-a-kind tweets that aren’t visible to your followers.

You need at least X Premium or Premium+ to use these features.

6. Increase in Application Protocol Interface (API) Pricing

Several third-party apps rely on Twitter’s API to interact with the social media network. A growing community of developers provided innovative features that weren’t available on the platform.

However, this stopped with the change in API pricing. This move made it quite expensive for developers to maintain their apps. They needed to pay huge amounts to support their user base. As a result, they stopped the majority of these services.

There are still apps that provide additional functionality. However, they no longer offer any free features.

7. Twitter Published Portions of Its Recommendation Algorithm on GitHub

Musk also promised to make the recommendation algorithm available to the public. In March 2023, the platform uploaded sections of this code to GitHub. This shows how the platform recommends content to users based on their activities. 

Upon closer inspection, you get to see how the platform boosts tweets. For instance, if posts get replies and the author engages with these users, Twitter’s algorithm will increase their visibility. People discovered that reports and blocks can reduce your reach on the platform.

However, as of November 2024, it has been over a year since the platform updated its GitHub page.

8. Block No Longer Has the Same Functionality

Earlier, when you blocked a Twitter user, they can no longer search for you on the platform. In other words, your profile won’t show up in the search results. The platform also prevents them from viewing your tweets when you publish them.

This is no longer the case, as the block doesn’t prevent people from seeing your posts. Musk claimed this was to keep everything transparent. However, it’s not clear whether the platform will stick with this decision or restore the block’s functionality.

9. The Likes Tab on Your Profile Page Doesn’t Exist

When you have a public profile, anyone can see the Likes tab on your account page. People can also see who liked a tweet, even if they’re not the author. This changed with X Premium. At first, the platform gave subscribers the option to hide the Likes tab.

Twitter went one step further and made this feature available to everyone. It even removed the Likes section from a post’s engagement dashboard. As a result, you can no longer see who liked your tweet unless you’re the post’s author.

10. Different Colored Checkmarks Based on Who Is Using the Account

The social media company introduced new checkmarks. Verified X Premium, aka Twitter Blue subscribers, get blue checkmarks. If the account belongs to a business, they’ll get the yellow tick. But, the platform only gives this checkmark when they join Verified Organizations. Government officials get a gray tick mark. This makes it easier to identify accounts from a glance.

TweetDelete Can Keep Your Twitter Activities Private

Twitter’s acquisition was significant because of its impact on the social media company. It’s quite different, and its current leadership continues to release new features and transform the platform.

Your tweets and likes will go nowhere, even if the social media platform changes ownership. This means anyone can go through your older posts. In most cases, nothing will happen, as your profile may not have anything substantial.

But what if there are controversial, insensitive, offensive, or harmful tweets? People can draw attention to these posts, which impacts your real life.

The good news is that you won’t have to worry about these situations with TweetDelete. It is a third-party tool that can remove any number of tweets from your profile page. The mass-delete tweets task can erase multiple tweets with a single click.

There’s the auto-delete task, which runs automatically. It looks for specific posts and erases them before they resurface. You can also use the unlike tweets utility to delete your likes. The best part is that there are no obvious signs that you removed certain tweets and likes.

These features rely on TweetDelete’s custom filter, which locates posts by keywords, date ranges, and tweet type. Moreover, this tool works flawlessly despite the changes after the Twitter acquisition.

Give TweetDelete a go today to ensure your older tweets and likes don’t resurface and damage your reputation!

FAQ on the Twitter Acquisition

Do you have more questions on X acquisitions? Check out the following section to find answers to popular queries on this topic.