Whether you like it or not, Elon Musk and the Twitter acquisition have dominated the conversation for the past six months. Since the billionaire’s purchase of the microblogging service precisely 5 months ago, a lot has occurred. In reality, Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter after months of haggling, but the business is now only worth $20 billion, or less than half of the original cost. Do you have any questions about the previous five months? The response, obviously, is a lot.

Quick recap

On October 27, 2022, Musk purchased Twitter. Shortly after, he took over as CEO, succeeding Parag Agrawal. Along with Agrawal, the tycoon dismissed a number of high-ranking officials, including Vijaya Gadde, a former chief legal officer, and others. Musk, the CEO of Twitter and owner of four other businesses, plans to leave his post by the end of the year. Already, he is searching for a replacement Twitter CEO. Musk is adamant that the incoming CEO won’t have complete authority, though. He will still be in charge of the programme and server departments. “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk wrote in one of his previous tweets.

The events of the past five months have completely altered Twitter’s course, regardless of what transpires at the end of the year or whether Musk decides to step down as CEO of the company. In recent months, the company’s worth has decreased by more than half, from $44 billion to $20 billion, which is probably not what Musk intended. But given the circumstances, Twitter is now valued at $20 billion despite eliminating thousands of positions, selling office equipment, terminating janitors, launching the Blue membership, etc.

The fact that marketers have shrunk back is one of the main causes for Twitter’s worth to have fallen in half. According to reports, more than half of the top 1,000 marketers on Twitter in September reportedly ceased using the service in the first few weeks of January. Around 625 of the top 1,000 Twitter marketers, including well-known companies like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Jeep, Wells Fargo, and Merck, had stopped using the platform as of January, according to a CNN story. Musk is making every effort to rebuild Twitter and attract marketers back to the site. Musk also praised advertisers for coming back to the site in December of last year.

Despite the fact that some marketers are returning, more than half have removed their ads from the site. Musk let go more than half of the staff, including hundreds of people from India, to make up for the loss. The tycoon also stopped paying rent in some sites as part of cost-cutting measures and began auctioning off cooking and workplace equipment. So much so that Musk also ended Twitter’s complimentary lunch/food program, which co-founder Jack Dorsey had instituted.