New owner plans widespread revamp but he’ll need to put in effort to keep advertisers onside
Elon Musk’s approach to managing Twitter since his takeover has been as inconsistent as his timeline on the social media platform.
The world’s wealthiest man has sacked staff, suggested a change to user verification and is supposedly looking at several moves that would represent a widespread revamp of the service if implemented. Here are the most significant changes he has made until now or is considering carrying out.
Workforce cuts
Twitter started firing among its 7,500-strong workforce on Friday, amid reports that Musk intends to sack about 50% of them. An email to staff said: “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday.”
Musk obtained just below $13bn (£11.6bn) of debt to help fund the acquisition of a company that took a loss of $221m in 2021. Its new interest bill will be close to $1bn each year, so he needs to reduce costs and increase annual revenues that hit $5.1bn last year.
Executive Clear-out
Musk is currently the sole director of Twitter after disbanding the board, including the chair, Bret Taylor, and gutting several executives as soon as he acquired the business last week. The firings included the chief executive, Parag Agrawal, the head of legal, policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde, and the chief financial officer, Ned Segal.
As the de facto CEO, Musk has taken in a team of associates to help him manage the business, including his personal attorney, Alex Spiro, and his tech investors David Sacks and Jason Calacanis.
Changes To Verification
Accounts of public interest on Twitter have a blue tick next to their name, verifying that they are who they say they are; Musk has indicated that he is about to fix a price for that privilege. Over 230 million people tweet daily and roughly 420,000 of them have a tick next to their name.
On Tuesday, Musk declared that verification will cost $8 monthly as part of a revamp of the platform’s premium service, Twitter Blue. He tweeted:
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.”
The New York Times has reported that the new-look Twitter Blue will be unveiled in the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (the only countries where Twitter Blue is currently available) on 7 November, and that for an interim period blue tick holders will still have their symbol even if they don’t pay – although in time they will if they don’t pay up the money.
Content Moderation And Account Reinstatement Plans
Musk has vowed there will be no changes to content policies, or reinstatements of suspended accounts such as Donald Trump’s, until a newly named content moderation council is assembled. He has said it will take at least “a few more weeks” for a new process controlling account reinstatements to take effect.
Twitter has also said it has been affected by a coordinated trolling attack since the takeover, in which vexatious accounts tried to create the impression that the platform had become a hate speech free-for-all. The company’s head of safety and integrity said the site had been flooded with hateful content – at least 50,000 tweets – from 300 accounts.
Different Tiers
Musk has suggested the idea of splitting Twitter into separate strands of content. He put forward that users choose which version of Twitter they want, much like selecting a film based on its content rating. He also supported a user’s suggestion that the platform splits into different video game-style modes, including a “player versus player” version, where verified accounts can take part in Twitter spats.
A user could allocate a rating to their posts, which would then be modified by “user feedback”, which sounds like a Wikipedia-style approach to moderation.
Bringing Back Vine?
Musk created a poll on Monday, asking users if he should revive Vine, the app sharing six-second-long videos deemed to be a precursor to TikTok but shut by Twitter in 2016. The result, after almost 5m votes, was 70% approval. However, the app’s code has not been updated since 2016 and platforms such as YouTube and TikTok represent strong opposition.
Charging For Video Content
Musk is also supposedly looking at charging for video content. The feature would involve enabling people to post videos and charging users to watch them, with Twitter taking a cut. However, the plan has been identified internally as high-risk, according to the Washington Post, which pointed to a memo flagging “copyrighted content, creator/user trust issues, and legal compliance”.
The tech news website the Verge reported in August that Twitter, under its former leadership, had considered allowing adult content accounts to sell OnlyFans-style subscriptions on the platform. However, the project flopped on concerns that Twitter would not be able to monitor the service accordingly for illegal material such as child sexual abuse, the Verge reported.
Bringing In Tesla Coders
The Twitter revamp is being overseen partly by a team of specialists and software engineers at Tesla. Over fifty employees from Musk’s electric carmaker have been joined at Twitter by one from his brain implant business, Neuralink, and two from his tunneling firm, the Boring Company, according to CNBC.
The news organization reported that Tesla employees have been modifying code at Twitter, as Musk advances his overhaul plans.
Buy Bitcoin NowPlacating Advertisers
There is one change that Musk is dedicated to hindering: an exodus of advertisers. Given that ads generate 90% of the company’s revenue, the Tesla CEO wants to keep them onside while he attempts to push up income via other initiatives.
To that end, he sent a message to advertisers as the takeover was being concluded, saying he would not allow the platform to become a nest for hate speech. He said:
“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.”
Advertisers have, nevertheless, gone on pause. General Mills, the company behind the Cheerios and Lucky Charms cereals, said it would pause advertising on Twitter, joining the car firms Audi and General Motors in tracking changes at the company before determining whether to resume. The pharmaceutical company Pfizer has allegedly suspended its advertising, too.
