South African born business tycoon Elon Musk has completed the $44 billion Twitter takeover
After the deal was completed Musk tweeted “the bird is freed”, in an apparent reference to Twitter’s bird logo and his desire to see the company have fewer limits on content that can be posted.
A number of top executives, including the boss, Parag Agrawal, have reportedly been fired.
It brings to a close a saga that saw Twitter go to court to hold the multi-billionaire to the terms of a takeover deal that he had tried to escape.
Mr Musk has described the decision to exclude former US President Donald Trump as “foolish” and said he would reverse it.
Mr Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter in January 2021 following the attack by his supporters on the Capitol building in Washington which resulted in the deaths of five people. Twitter said it wanted to avoid the risk that his tweets would incite further violence.
Mr Trump has insisted he won’t be reactivating his account – preferring instead to post on his own platform Truth Social.
Mr Musk has posted that his plans for Twitter include “X, the app for everything”.
Some suggest this might be something along the lines of the hugely successful Chinese app WeChat, a kind of “super app” that incorporates different services including messaging, social media, payments and food orders.
bbc, agencies
