U.Today - It has been a year since bought Twitter in October 2022. He has posted a tweet to highlight a year anniversary since he closed the deal on purchasing the social media microblogging platform for $44 billion.
"Freedom," the tech tycoon wrote, citing his own tweet from October 28 last year, in which he had stated "the bird is freed," hinting at the iconic blue bird — the logo of Twitter.
Prominent changes Musk made on Twitter since purchase
The Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO had to walk a long way before the deal was closed. First, in the summer of 2022, he acquired nearly 10% of Twitter's stock to become the largest single Twitter investor. Then he was invited to become a member of the board of directors, but he rejected this offer. After that, Musk offered to buy Twitter, but his offer was turned down. This was followed by Twitter agreeing to the future purchase, but then Musk suddenly backed out of the deal and was sued for it.Finally, he did pay $44 billion for the social media giant and rapidly began to cut costs of the company — fired a lot of people from the top management team and average staff, closed local offices in several other countries. Then Musk introduced a mandatory $8 montly fee for blue verification check marks, which previously were given to users for free but based on vague merits. Musk allowed anyone to have those, thus adding income to the company, explaining it by saying that Twitter cannot rely solely on advertisers when it comes to profits.
A lot of advertisers then left Twitter, but gradually they began to return. Monetization and Subscription features have been added. The former allows users to get a share of revenue from advertising, and the latter allows them to get monthly fees from those who choose to subscribe to their content. Twitter users can now write long posts (it is no longer a microblogging platform) and live stream videos. Voice and video call features are being tested now. Finally, Twitter is being rebranded as X. It has gained 500 million of monthly active users.
When buying Twitter, Elon Musk stated that his major goal was to give people back freedom of speech on this platform. He likened Twitter to the "global town square," where people can talk to each other and exchange opinions. Hence, the tweet he published last year about "freeing the bird."
Crypto community's reaction to Musk's tweet
As it has been happening often recently, of crypto fans among his followers (there are quite a lot of them, since Musk is the most followed person on Twitter with 161.1 million followers).While the X boss spoke of freedom in his tweet, the Kraken exchange responded in its own way, mentioning the leading cryptocurrency, BTC: "Bitcoin is to financial freedom, as X has aimed to be with freedom of speech."
The Gost privacy coin team, started by the late John McAfee, also made an appearance in the comment thread, promoting their project.
Overall, the community thanked Musk for "freeing the bird," but haters showed up too. One X user asked whether Musk intends to integrate Dogecoin on X as he hinted several times in the past.