Since originally offering to purchase Twitter, the world’s richest man has made it apparent that he intends to make significant changes at the social media behemoth. Until now, he has gladly fired staff he deems antithetical to his free speech values and outraged leftists through tweets.
Musk terminated four executives quickly after assuming control of the business. Former CEO Parag Agrawal was scheduled to get up to $60 million on his own, but Musk fired them all “for cause” without revealing his motivations. When he inherited leadership on Thursday, the Tesla and SpaceX executive swiftly sacked the social media company’s CEO, CFO, head of legal, and general counsel.
According to a regulatory filing, Twitter had over 7,000 workers at the end of 2021, and a quarter of that workforce corresponds to approximately 2,000 people.
According to rumors, Elon Musk intends to lay off a quarter of Twitter’s workers in his first wave of layoffs following his $44 billion acquisition. According to the Washington Post, celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, a longtime legal representative for Musk, spearheaded the negotiations regarding the layoffs.
According to a source for the Post, the initial round of layoffs will affect nearly every area, including sales, product, engineering, legal, and trust and safety in the coming days.
Musk rejected a New York Times allegation that Twitter will lay off personnel before to November 1, which is tomorrow, in order to avoid stock awards due on that day. Musk also refuted reports that he would terminate staff before they got their stock-based remuneration on November 1.
What a guy. @elonmusk is making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation *kicks in on Tuesday.* https://t.co/sEclZozKV5 pic.twitter.com/inw3vF0kIL
— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) October 29, 2022
This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times! pic.twitter.com/d6V6m5ATW2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Now, Musk is rumored to have issued an ultimatum to Twitter’s developers, instructing them to overhaul Twitter’s verification system within two weeks or risk termination.
@sriramk any chance in helping with verification? Denied some 4-5 times despite large following and working to share spaceflight/rocket launches to the masses via my photography. Published in a plethora of huge outlets but Twitter doesn’t seem to care! https://t.co/efL1l1H2d9
— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) October 30, 2022
Twitter has close to 400 thousand verified users. According to sources, bots make up five percent of all users, while ‘heavy tweeters’ make up fewer than ten percent of the site’s monthly users, therefore requiring them to pay might help the company stay alive.
How much would you pay to be verified & get a blue check mark on Twitter?
— [email protected] (@Jason) October 31, 2022
More on this story via The Republic Brief:
Less active users mean less eyeballs for advertisers. During the court battle to acquire Twitter, Musk himself claimed that fewer than 16 million users are able to see the vast majority of ads. CONTINUE READING…