Battle for the Bird Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul

Now known as X, Twitter’s messy history—including Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022, its outsized cultural impact, and its significant role in shaping how the world gets its news—is thoroughly and entertainingly revealed in this “absolute triumph of reporting and storytelling” (Ashlee Vance, New York Times bestselling author).

Bloomberg journalist Kurt Wagner takes you inside Twitter’s everchanging headquarters, charting its rise from flippant 140-character posts to one of the world’s most consequential tech companies. From Jack Dorsey’s triumphant return as CEO in 2015 to the rise and fall of @RealDonaldTrump to the contentious $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, Battle for the Bird exposes the messy reality and relentless challenges that come with building a global social network.

This is the “meticulous and riveting account” (Emily Chang, host of Bloomberg’s The Circuit) of the fight over the world’s most influential social media platform. Now, for the first time—through deeply sourced, exclusive interviews—you will discover how the visionary promises of one iconoclast gave way to the darker, yet-to-be-defined motives of another, upending the virtual status quo and impacting the flow of news and information to the masses.

Kurt Wagner is an award-winning business and technology journalist covering social media for Bloomberg, where he has worked since 2019. He’s been covering social media since 2013 and has spent years writing about Twitter and its impact on society. He previously worked at the influential tech outlets Recode, Mashable, and Fortune. Kurt grew up near Seattle, went to college at Santa Clara University, and now lives in Denver with his family. Follow him on Twitter or X @KurtWagner8.