Twitter is an American social media company based in San Francisco, California, that allows users to microblog, post videos, and social network. The company is considered one of the major social media companies in the world and has hundreds of millions of users. Twitter's major competitors include Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Moreover, the application allows users to join audio spaces to speak to one another in real time.
Previously, Twitter allowed users to live stream videos via Periscope. Twitter was founded in 2006 by technology entrepreneurs Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. In the following years, the company grew immensely, gaining 100 million new users that were tweeting millions of tweets a day. By 2013, the company was being publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Many celebrities and political figures have used the app to send out personal and professional messages.
The application is also important for candidates running for office to spread their agenda and advertise to potential voters. In January 2020, following the riots at the Capitol Building, Twitter suspended the account of then-President Donald Trump. The move was seen as unprecedented and was also carried out by other rival social media companies such as Facebook and YouTube. After resigning as the company's CEO, Dorsey stood by the decision but said he worried about the precedent it would set. Currently, Twitter's chief executive is Parag Agrawal, and the board of directors chairman is Bret Taylor.
Since April 2022, Twitter's board of directors were negotiating with billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, to buy the company and take it private. After Twitter agreed to his original offer of $44 billion, Musk terminated the deal in July. However, the board eventually agreed to Musk's offer after a brief legal battle and public controversy. On October 27, 2022, Musk became the official owner of Twitter and immediately fired the company's top three executives and named himself acting CEO. Within a week, Twitter laid off approximately half the employees on their payroll.
