It's official. Elon Musk now owns Twitter

“The bird is freed,” reads Elon Musk’s latest tweet from an hour ago. He’s now the self-proclaimed Chief Twit in charge of Twitter.

Musk has finally completed his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform co-founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006.

After months of lawsuits and controversy, Musk closed the Twitter deal on Thursday, followed by an exercise in cleaning house.

According to The New York Times, Musk fired at least four top executives at the company, including former CEO Parag Agarwal and CFO Ned Segal. An anonymous source told the publication that one of those people had to be escorted out of Twitter’s office.

What’s next for Twitter?

With Musk at the helm of affairs, Twitter enters a new era, one that’s marked by uncertainty. The billionaire has often expressed how he wants the platform to allow unrestricted free speech and less moderation. He even promised to lift the permanent ban on former US President Donald J. Trump.

A few weeks back, Musk said that Twitter would be “an accelerant to creating X, an everything app.” He previously floated the idea of making Twitter a “Super app” to compete with popular Asian platforms like WeChat.

“It’s either convert Twitter to that or start something new. It does need to happen somehow,” he said on the All-in podcast.

“If you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat,” Musk had commented. “It does everything. It’s sort of like Twitter plus PayPal plus a whole bunch of things all rolled into one, with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app, and we don’t have anything like that outside of China.”

On the growth front, Musk has promised investors that Twitter would reach an annual revenue of $26.4 billion by 2028. Its revenue in 2021 was $5 billion. He also aims to increase the user count to 930 million in the next five to six years.