Elon's Rapid Twitter Buyout: A Timeline of past, present and future

June 4, 2010: Elon Musk created his Twitter account. Over the next 12 years he amassed 85 million followers – the seventh most of any account and the highest for any business leader.

August 7, 2018: Musk tweeted his considerations for taking Tesla - his $50 billion, publicly traded company - private. This is in fact illegal. Companies and executives are prohibited from giving shareholders potentially misleading information about corporate events.

September 29, 2018: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) agreed to a settlement for $40 million from Musk and Tesla, along with Musk’s removal as Chairman of the Tesla board, and controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications.

March 22, 2022: The S.E.C. announced that Musk breached the 2018 agreement and that they have authority to subpoena Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his tweets. They urged a federal judge "not to let the executive get away with tweeting with abandon" due to his influence on stocks.

March 26, 2022: Musk tweeted that he is "giving serious thought" to creating his own social media platform. 9 days later he spent $2.9 billion on approximately a 9.2% share of Twitter. He also quickly joined Twitter's Board of Directors.

April 10, 2022: In a quick reversal, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not join the Board after all. This after Musk had tweeted to his 80 million followers his curiosity wondering if Twitter was dying due to low frequency of tweets popular personalities.

April 14, 2022: Musk offered $43 billion to buy 100% of Twitter. The Board responded with a limited-duration shareholder rights plan in an attempt to prevent the purchase.

April 14, 2022: Hours after making his offer, Musk dis a live, public TedTalk interview where he discussed his bid for Twitter, along with how the need for free speech, transparency and open source coding on the platform were his reasons for making the offer.

April 25, 2022: Twitter accepted Musk's offer of $44 billion with a $1 billion termination fee on both sides. The company then quickly locked all source code to prevent any disgruntled employees making substantive changes. All code changes were submitted to a VP for approval.

The Future: With Twitter as Musk's private company, he can essentially turn the platform into his own private playground. He immediately took Twitter's Board of Directors salary to $0, and has made promises to make the platform more authentic and open to all legal free speech.