Elon Musk appointed to Twitter board of directors after becoming company's largest shareholder

• Elon Musk is joining Twitter's board of directors, the social media company announced Tuesday.
• The move comes days after the news that Musk took a 9.2% stake in the company.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is joining Twitter's board of directors, the social media company announced Tuesday morning.

"Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board," Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet. Musk, meanwhile, said he is "looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!"

In a potential nod to those "improvements," Musk tweeted out a poll Monday night asking his over 80 million followers if they "want an edit button" on the service — a long-requested function that's become a kind of inside joke among Twitter users.

Agrawal even got in on the poll, retweeting it from his account and adding "the consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully."

Musk is joining the board after disclosing a 9.2% stake in the social media company earlier this week. The investment made him Twitter's largest shareholder virtually overnight.

Twitter detailed the terms of Musk's appointment to the board in a regulatory filing.

He's to begin serving as soon as is bureaucratically possible (following a background check and other formalities), with a term expiring in 2024, it said. As part of the conditions of his appointment, Musk isn't allowed to "become the beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of the company's common stock outstanding at such time" — which is to say that, while he serves on the board and for 90 days following, he isn't allowed to take a stake in Twitter larger than 14.9%.

Musk is a longtime Twitter user, where he's often used his account to share memes, Tesla news, crude jokes, and even to criticize Twitter itself. It's also landed him in hot water.

Last week, for instance, Musk said: "Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?" When one follower asked if Musk would ever create his own social media platform, he said he was "giving serious thought" to the concept.

And last year, when former Twitter CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey stepped down — and current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal stepped in — Musk illustrated his reaction with a meme that compared the incoming CEO to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

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