The bumpy takeover of Twitter has been causing concern among the workforce for months. Multi-entrepreneur Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion at the end of October. A price that analysts consider to be significantly inflated. In view of the open bills now coming to Musk, cuts were considered likely. Last Friday, the new Twitter boss put the plan into action: it is estimated that almost half of the workforce had to go.
Musk justified the layoffs with an urgently needed austerity plan. Since the company is losing $4 million every day, he has no other choice.
However, the mass dismissal was apparently not thought through to the end. Shortly after the terminations were sent out, management backtracked again: “We have the opportunity to ask the people who had to leave if they want to come back,” wrote an executive over the weekend in the internal communication channel Slack. The US blogger Casey Newton first reported on the recall campaign.
According to information from Bloomberg, some employees were probably “accidentally” fired.
Among the approximately 3,700 employees who were laid off, there were apparently some experienced people who would have been essential for the implementation of Elon Musk’s ideas. Whether they will come back is questionable. The outflow of know-how is likely to hit Twitter painfully, as social media analyst Matt Navarra comments.
However, the employees are not the only problem. Since Musk took the helm at Twitter, a number of business partners have shelved their advertising deals with the platform, including Volkswagen, Pfizer and General Mills. The companies are apparently concerned about the advertising environment on Twitter. Recently, reports have been circulating that hatred and hate speech have increased on the platform. Musk himself confirmed a “massive drop in sales” as a result of the advertising boycott.
However, instead of placating his partners, Musk switches to attack mode. If the exodus of advertisers continues, he wants to pillory the companies concerned, which he believes have bowed to pressure from the left-wing public.
Because Musk apparently no longer wants to rely on advertising revenue in the future, he is planning a paid offer called Twitter Blue. In the future, users should pay a monthly fee of $8 for the blue tick that confirms their authenticity. Users without this verification could be disadvantaged by the algorithm in the future.
Whether there is actually a willingness to pay for Twitter Blue is questionable. Some users have already announced that they will forego their blue tick or leave the platform altogether.
Anyway, it is currently unclear how Twitter will develop. Musk had announced that he would convert the platform into a place for absolute freedom of speech. One of his most recent measures contradicts this: Twitter had restricted some parody accounts of American comedians who posed online as Elon Musk over the weekend. Among them were the profiles of Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin.
