Billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk completed his acquisition of social media platform Twitter in a deal worth $44 billion last year.
The self-dubbed ‘Chief Twit’ finalised the takeover in October, marking the end of a long saga during which Musk spent months trying to wriggle out of the deal. The whole process led to a public feud with Twitter and a multi-billion dollar lawsuit which was only settled when he finally agreed to push through with the acquisition.
From firing top executives to massive layoffs, reinstating controversial suspended accounts and more, the beginning of Musk’s reign at Twitter has dominated the news cycle week after week.
Musk’s Twitter reign has been quite a roller coaster ride to say the least. Here are the 6 craziest moments at the company to date:
1. Twitter execs get the axe
Right off the bat, Musk’s first move as the company’s new owner was to fire its top executives including then-CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and top policy executive Vijaya Gadde.
The departure of these execs is bittersweet as they reportedly are entitled to “golden parachute” payouts worth more than $120 million.
Agrawal is likely to receive the largest payout, worth $57.4 million, while Segal and Gedde are entitled to $44.5 million and $20 million respectively, according to company filings.
Additionally, the three executives also hold a cumulative 1.2 million shares, which are likely to be bought by Musk as is standard in any takeover. Those payments would be worth $8.4 million to Agrawal, $22 million to Segal and $34.8 million to Gadde.
2. Mass resignations and thousands fired
The billionaire fired as many as 50 percent of Twitter’s workforce globally, including around 90 percent working from India.
Some of the company’s retained staff then resigned after Musk sent an “ultimatum” email that ordered everyone to be ready for Twitter 2.0 and be ready for a hardcore culture or leave with three months’ pay.
Additionally, more than 4400 of Twitter’s contract workers were laid off without any prior notice, many of whom reported that they found out that they have been terminated when they suddenly lost access to Slack and other work systems.
The tech billionaire addressed the decision in a Twitter post, writing: “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4 million/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50 percent more than legally required.”
3. Top advertisers exit
During the early weeks of Musk’s Twitter takeover, dozens of top advertisers paused marketing on the site.
According to a report by non-profit watchdog group Media Matters for America, 50 of the platform’s top 100 advertisers which have accounted for about $2 billion in spending since 2020, “have either announced or seemingly stopped advertising”.
These companies had brought in over $750 million in advertising just in 2022, said the report.
Musk also briefly clashed with Apple in late November, accusing the company of stopping advertising on Twitter and threatening to stop the site from its App Store. He said, “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.”
A couple of days later, Musk met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and said that his claim that Apple had threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store was a misunderstanding.
4. Suspended accounts reinstated
Musk proposes offering a general amnesty to suspended Twitter accounts. However, civil rights groups expressed alarm that Musk was reinstating accounts suspended for inciting violence or spreading misinformation.
5. Twitter Blue launch, takedown and relaunch
Among his first acts as Twitter CEO, Musk pushed the rollout of a feature within the platform’s subscription service that would allow people to pay for blue check marks on their profile.
Previously, blue check marks were given out only to verified accounts after Twitter had determined account holder’s identities were real.
However, only days after its launch, the subscription feature was paused after users started to impersonate brands and famous people including US President Joe Biden and Elon Musk himself.
In December, the feature was relaunched with some changes. With the revamp, subscribers won’t automatically get the blue check-mark. That will occur only “after your account has been reviewed,” according to Twitter.
In addition, subscribers will be able to change their handle, display name and profile photo, but “if they do they’ll temporarily lose the blue check-mark until their account is reviewed again,” the company said. An account must be at least 90 days old and have a confirmed phone number in order to subscribe to Twitter Blue.
6. Elon Musk loses Twitter poll
Musk released a poll asking Twitter users whether he should step down as head of Twitter and noted that he will abide by its results.
Over 57 percent of 17.5 million users who voted said that he should.
After the results come in, Musk said he would step down as chief executive of Twitter the moment he finds ‘someone foolish enough’ as his replacement.
The following day however, Musk said Twitter will only allow accounts with a blue tick to vote on changes to policy. Since then, he has not commented directly on the result of the poll.
