October 27th: Musk officially becomes the new owner of Twitter and tweets ‘the bird is released’.
November 1: Musk confirms plans to change the ‘Blue Tick’ verification system on Twitter, for a reduced subscription fee of $8 a month.
November 4th: Musk lays off half of Twitter’s workforce as an alleged cost-cutting measure, claiming he “had no choice.”
November 9: Musk launches ‘Twitter Blue’ subscription service that verifies accounts for a monthly fee.
November 11th: The Twitter Blue service is on hiatus as accounts buy verification and use it to impersonate brands and public figures.
12th of November: Musk fires 80 percent of Twitter contractors without notice.
November 15: Musk fires employees who posted negative comments about him on business messaging app Slack. Lawsuit between Musk and Twitter is dismissed.
Nov. 16: Twitter staff told they must sign a pledge in order to remain in their roles where they would be ‘working long hours at high intensity’ or receive three months’ severance pay, resulting in a mass exodus.
November 18th: A news ticker was projected at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters that called Musk a ‘space Karen’, ‘mediocre son’ and ‘bankrupt baby’.
November 23: A Twitter user reported that 5.4 million phone numbers and email addresses were leaked on the dark web before his account was suspended.
November 26: The Financial Times revealed that 50 of the platform’s top 100 advertisers have paused their ads.
November 29th: platforms reported that Twitter is in the process of reinstating around 62,000 banned accounts that have more than 10,000 followers each.
December 12th: Twitter Blue is relaunched with the new Blue Tick review process.
January 11: Twitter starts automatically redirecting users to the ‘For You’ tab, its algorithmic source of tweets, every time they open the app.
February 8th: Twitter extends the character limit to 4,000 for Twitter Blue subscribers in the US. Soon after, the site encounters technical difficulties.
February 12: Musk orders staff to revamp Twitter’s tweet promotion algorithm after his Super Bowl tweet failed to get enough impressions.
February 15: Twitter announces that it will remove SMS two-factor authentication (2FA) from the free version of Twitter, a decision one security expert called ‘absurd’ and will lead to ‘so many accounts being hacked’.
February 25: Twitter reveals a new round of layoffs that reduced its workforce to fewer than 2,000, a sharp drop from 7,500 employees when the billionaire first took office in October.
28th March: Musk announces that he will prevent people from voting in Twitter polls or having their tweets appear in the For You tab if they don’t pay for Twitter Blue.
April 11: Musk gives a BBC interview at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, where he says he has been sleeping on the floor of the company’s offices. Musk also accused the interviewer of lying because he was unable to back up the allegations about hate speech on the platform.
June 21: Musk says he is “ready for a cage fight” with rival tech CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
1st of July: Musk announces limits on the number of tweets users can see per day: 600 for people not registered with Twitter Blue and 6,000 for Twitter Blue subscribers.
