Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk has prepared the remaining Twitter workforce for hard times after the staff quake, in which up to 50 percent of the previous 7,000 employees were laid off. As US media reports, he should not rule out an insolvency of the short message service in 2023.
Only subscriptions should still be able to save Twitter
< p class="p text-width">As the news broadcasting group Bloomberg, the New York Times and Platformer have unanimously reported, Elon Musk is said to have pointed out an impending bankruptcy in the coming year in an official email to his employees.
The US media also published excerpts from the e-mail which, according to Elon Musk, is said to have made the following statements to the entire workforce:
- I'm sorry this is my first email to the entire company, but there's no way to whitewash the news.
- Without significant subscription revenue, Twitter is unlikely to survive the coming economic downturn.
- We need about half of our subscription revenue.
Elon Musk, CEO and Owner, Twitter
Three more top managers quit
Also, as the website The Verge previously reported, Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran, Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner, and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty have resigned from their jobs as top executives at Twitter. The website also published the full statement that the privacy team attorney posted on the official Twitter channel on Slack.
Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them. I do not believe he cares about the human rights activists. the dissidents, our users in un-monetizable regions, and all the other users who have made Twitter the global town square you have all spent so long building, and we all love.
I have heard Alex Spiro (current head of Legal) say that Elon is willing to take on a huge amount of risk in relation to this company and its users, because “Elon puts rockets into space, he's not afraid of the FTC.” I have heard another leader in the Legal department say that because of the tight SLA's (of two weeks?!) between product inception > launch, Legal will “have to shift the burden to engineers” to self-certify compliance with FTC requirements and other laws.
This will put huge amount of personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers: I anticipate that all of you will be pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents.
All of this is extremely dangerous for our users. Also, given that the FTC can (and will!) fine Twitter BILLIONS of dollars pursuant to the FTC Consent Order, extremely detrimental to Twitter's longevity as a platform. Our users deserve so much better than this.
Lawyer from Twitter's data protection team
Twitter is around 90 percent ad-financed
After several well-known companies deleted their advertising on Twitter and Elon Musk threatened to expose them, the Twitter CEO announced several times that he wanted to convert the short message service away from a business model that is currently around 90 percent advertising-financed towards more subscriptions.
The first innovation, the new Twitter Blue, an $8 monthly subscription that also includes the verification tick, caused some confusion at first.
Many users changed their name to the verified account and pretended to be celebrities, politicians and well-known athletes or even Elon Musk.
The “eight-dollars” browser extension helps identify fake accounts (image: William Seagar)The free browser extension eight-dollars for Chromium-based browsers helps to better recognize such accounts
Musk strikes employees the home office
As Spiegel reports, employees who were previously allowed to work from anywhere must appear in the office at least 40 hours a week. He had already made it clear at Tesla that Musk is not a supporter of working from home.
Elon Musk himself only allows very few exceptions when it comes to working from home, such as illness or personal commitments.
Of course, if you are physically unable to travel to an office or have an important personal commitment, your absence is understandable
Elon Musk, Elon Musk, CEO and Owner, Twitter
Employees who have moved due to the company's freedom to work from home are said to have been given 60 days by the CEO to return.
Elon Musk is slipping into the sights of the US authorities
The financing of the sensational takeover and thus the new owner Elon Musk are now increasingly being targeted by the authorities.
No one less than the current US President Joe Biden would like have the billionaire's connections with other countries checked. As Der Spiegel reports, the White House has shown itself open to an examination of the entrepreneur's foreign business by American authorities.
I think Elon Musk's collaborations and technical relationships with other countries are worth checking out.
Joe Biden, US President
As the website continues , Elon Musk received part of the 44 billion to buy the short message service from Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a subsidiary of the State Investment Fund of Qatar and the platform Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange.