The story
Founded by Biz Stone, Noah Glass, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey on Apr 19, 2007.1
2006–2007: Creation and initial reaction
Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at New York University, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. Work on the project started in February 2006. Dorsey published the first Twitter message on March 21, 2006, at 12:50 p.m. PST (UTC−08:00): "just setting up my twttr". The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees. The full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.
The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it." Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Blogger Scott Beale said that Twitter was "absolutely ruling" SXSWi. Social software researcher danah boyd said Twitter was "owning" the conference.
2007–2022: Growth
In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies. Twitter also expanded its office in Dublin. Twitter hit 100 million monthly active users in September 2011. On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users.
The company had its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on November 7, 2013.
In September 2016, Twitter shares rose 20% after a report that it had received takeover approaches. Potential buyers were Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Verizon, and The Walt Disney Company. Twitter's board of directors were open to a deal, which could have come by the end of 2016. However, no deal was made, with reports in October stating that all the potential buyers dropped out partly due to concerns over abuse and harassment on the service. In 2017, Twitter revamped its dashboard to improve the new user experience and Stone came up with a purpose statement for the company: "Twitter exists to serve the public conversation".
In April 2021, Twitter announced that it was establishing its African headquarters in Ghana.
In January 2022, Twitter finalized the sale of MoPub to AppLovin. The deal was first announced in October 2021, and the selling price was reported at $1.05 billion.
Acquisition by Elon Musk
Businessman Elon Musk revealed that he had bought 9.1% of Twitter for $2.64 billion on April 4, 2022. In response, Twitter's stock rose by as much as 27% and Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday surge since Twitter's IPO in 2013. Musk was appointed to Twitter's board on April 9, under a deal that prohibited him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company.
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Musk made an unsolicited offer on April 14 to acquire Twitter for $44 billion and take the company private. Publicly, Musk expressed that his offer was motivated by concerns with how the company was managed, emphasizing his concern that policies he described as censorship were leading to a lack of free speech on the platform. Twitter's board introduced a "poison pill" strategy on April 15, which would allow shareholders to buy additional stock should a hostile takeover occur as a means to block Musk's takeover. On April 20, Musk secured $46.5 billion in funding as a tender offer, which the board accepted on April 25.
On July 8, Musk announced he was unilaterally terminating the proposed acquisition, claiming in a regulatory filing that Twitter was in "material breach" of several parts of the agreement by refusing to comply with Musk's requests for spambot account data and dismissing high-ranking employees. In response, Twitter board chair Bret Taylor pledged to pursue legal action against Musk at the Delaware Court of Chancery with the goal of completing the acquisition. On July 12, Twitter opened a lawsuit against Musk to force the sale to proceed. On September 13, 2022, Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk's takeover of the company.
On October 4, 2022, it was reported that Musk offered to proceed with the deal at the original offer price of $54.20 per share. The deal closed on October 27, 2022, with the merger between Twitter, Inc. and X Holdings II, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings I, Inc., wholly owned by Musk, and Musk took control of the company, paying $54.20 per share, or about $44 billion.
By January 2023, Twitter only had around 2,300 employees left, according to Musk, with only 550 working full-time. By April, there were less than 1,500 active employees left with 80% of Twitter's work force gone within a year.
Post-acquisition
On October 28, immediately following Musk's acquisition, he fired CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal. Twitter's stock was suspended from trading prior to the New York Stock Exchange opening the next day and was delisted on November 8. On October 31, Musk announced in a security filing that he had dissolved the board of directors and would serve as the CEO of the company. In January 2023, he also fired an employee who criticized him.
On November 4, Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees, leaving several internal departments, including communication and core engineering teams, understaffed. Some of the employees were later asked to return, with Twitter stating that they were "laid off by mistake". Several current and former Twitter employees sued the company for violations of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 due to failures to provide a 60-day notice prior to mass firings.
Top security, compliance, content moderation, and sales executives resigned due to Musk stating that employees must either work longer hours or resign from the company. On November 16, Musk issued an "ultimatum" to all remaining Twitter employees warning that workers could expect "long, intense hours of work" if they decided to stay, a decision that was ordered to be made by the following day, with news sources reporting numerous employees leaving on the same day. The Verge reported that multiple critical engineering teams "completely or near-total[ly] resigned", increasing internal fears of a collapse of Twitter.
Within a week of Musk's acquisition and subsequent internal instability of the firm, including layoffs of Twitter's trust and safety teams, large advertisers including General Mills, Pfizer, Volkswagen, and General Motors announced an advertising pause. Advertising agencies, including IPG and Omnicom Media Group, advised clients to pause ad spending on Twitter temporarily until the platform can sufficiently assure brand safety concerns. Apprehension over increased hate speech made advertisers leave in large numbers. Impersonator accounts had increased following errors in the blue tick scheme for verified users causing concerns. Musk said Twitter was experiencing "a massive drop in revenue" causing losses of $4 million per day, which he attributed to "activist groups pressuring advertisers," adding that "nothing is working" to lure advertisers back.
According to a November 2022 report from Media Matters for America, Twitter had lost half of its top 100 advertisers, which spent $750 million on ads in 2022. Advertising research firm Standard Media Index said advertiser spending on Twitter declined 55% in November year-on-year, and declined 71% in December, despite those holiday months typically seeing higher ad spending.
By December 2022, Musk's family office privately sought to sell new shares valued at his original acquisition price of $54.20, amid turmoil among users and advertisers, and debt payments approaching. Musk's money manager wrote to investors that in recent weeks the family office had received "numerous inbound requests to invest in Twitter." The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2023 that talks had been held to raise up to $3 billion to pay down some of the $13 billion in bank debt incurred in the deal, which includes a $3 billion high interest rate bridge loan. Musk denied the report, saying, "corpo media shills clearly have their marching orders to write hit pieces on me these days." The Journal reported in October 2023 that the seven major banks that provided the $13 billion loan had been unable to follow the standard practice of quickly selling down their exposure to other banks, due to a lack of appetite for the debt since Musk took over. The banks expected to mark down the debt by at least 15% in order to sell it.
In April 2023, Twitter, now under the ownership of Musk, designated National Public Radio as "US state-affiliated media", a label "that's typically been reserved for foreign media outlets that represent the official views of the government, like Russia's RT and China's Xinhua." This move by Twitter sparked a controversy and accusations of pro-Republican bias. In a statement to Variety, NPR president and CEO John Lansing condemned the decision.
Twitter, Inc. was merged with X Corp. in April 2023. X Corp. itself was merged with Musk's startup xAI in March 2025, nearly 2 years later.
From Wikipedia’s article on Twitter, Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7