The board of Twitter has agreed to allow a $44 billion takeover offer from Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

The social media platform, known as the 'world's town square' had initially pushed back advances from Musk to acquire the platform after it was revealed he had bought a 9.2% stake in the company.

However, the board of Twitter has announced it will ask shareholder to vote to approve the deal.

Musk said in a statement that Twitter had "tremendous" potential. He has previously called for widereaching changes to the platform including an edit button to relaxing content restrictions to foster freedom of speech. He has also pledged to deliver growth for the company.

All eyes will now be on his pronouncements, or tweets, to get an idea of what he wants to do with the social media platform.

Today figures in European Union, which has led the charge on regulation of social media platforms, has warned that Musk's Twitter will have to comply with a raft of new digital rules or risk large fines or a potential ban.

Before the takeover, which will need to go through a potentially long US Securities and Exchange Commission supervisory process,the priority for the Twitter board was to “substantially” improve profitability by 2023.

Musk's initial holding entitled him to a place on the board, which was offered to him, but he turned it down, before soon coming back with his full bid for the company.

Musk is buying Twitter in a personal capacity, with Tesla not involved in the acquisition.

Current Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal was appointed to the position last November, and at this stage it is not known whether Musk wants to keep him on, or put his own leadership team in charge.

He may of course take the top job himself, although some financial analysts believe he doesn’t need hands-on control of Twitter to steer it in the direction he wants.

Speaking after the announcement, Musk said: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

He added: “I want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.

“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

Twitter plans to release its first quarter results before the market opens on 28 April. It will be taken private once the deal is completed later this year.

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