What’s in store for Twitter with Musk in charge?

Elon Musk is a man of many things: Founder and CEO of SpaceX, early investor and CEO of Tesla Motors, Founder and CEO of The Boring Company and Co-Founder of PayPal.

According to Forbes Magazine, his success with these companies has made him the richest man in the world, with a net worth of approximately $191 billion. But now he takes another title into his hands: Owner and CEO of Twitter, one of the largest and most popular social media apps. To understand how Musk was given these two titles, let’s go back to April 2022.

In April of this year, Musk announced that he was planning on purchasing Twitter after previously buying stocks of the company back in January. These purchases catapulted him to becoming one of Twitter’s largest shareholders with 9.1% stake in ownership. It wasn’t until April 14, 2022 that he publicly announced that he was planning on purchasing the entire company for an estimated $43 million dollars.

While initially hesitant, on April 25, 2022, Twitter’s board of directors agreed and showed support in Musk’s offer to buy the company, now with the price point changing to $44 million dollars. That’s when things started to change for not only Musk but the future of Twitter.

In July of 2022, Musk announced that he was backing out of the deal with Twitter and wanted to terminate the agreement altogether.

After he announced his plan to back out of the purchase, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk for breaking the deal. A trial between Twitter and Musk was set to start on October 17, 2022. However, the court case would never happen, as a few weeks before he was to face Twitter in court, Musk changed his mind. He decided to complete his purchase of Twitter, with him buying the entire company and finishing the purchase on October 27, 2022.

Shortly after he finished his purchase, Musk announced he was already making plans for future changes for Twitter.

One of those changes is charging users $8 a month to have a blue checkmark, which verifies a popular user, next to their username. Known as “Twitter Blue”, this idea was met with immediate criticism from users, who said the idea was a cash grab for Musk.

Another one of Musk’s future ideas is to bring back the dead social media app Vine, which was bought by Twitter in 2013. The app was discontinued in 2016 due to low revenue and many creators moving to other social media platforms.

It may seem exciting to hear Vine’s possible resurrection, but since TikTok is considered an unofficial successor to Vine, it might be best to let Vine just rest.

While we don’t know what the future holds for Twitter under Elon Musk, all we can do is hope he can do good for the platform and maybe fix some of the current issues on there. Let’s hope he might be able to fix up Twitter so that more people can have an enjoyable experience without feeling uncomfortable or targeted while using the app. Whether he is willing to be better or not is left to be seen in the future.