The emails began arriving in Twitter employees’ personal inboxes in the early hours of Friday morning: “Today is your last day at the company,” the letter read.
As people frantically update their business and personal accounts to find out their fate, new owner Elon Musk has been trying to defend his decision to cut thousands of jobs. He said the company experienced a “huge drop in revenue” due to advertisers escaping from network advertising.
Read more: “The guillotine will reach everyone” .. Why the fear of Elon Musk’s “Twitter” driving?
It’s been an eventful week for Twitter. Since taking over as president of the company last week, Musk has assembled a transition team of confidants to help identify deep cost cuts and quick ways to increase revenue. Workforce cuts worldwide are expected to affect 3,700 jobs, about half of the company’s employees.
Some departing employees said they would receive at least two months’ salary following the layoff. Elon Musk is also looking for other ways to achieve his goal of cutting spending, according to a report released by “Bloomberg” and seen by “Al Arabiya Net”.
This happens; While the “Wall Street Journal” cited major companies that will monitor Elon Musk’s trends on “Twitter” before returning to advertising on the platform. Some advertisers warn against associating their brands with Twitter during the turmoil. Audi, Pfizer and General Mills Inc have said they will suspend Twitter advertising until they know how it will evolve.
In his first reaction to the moves, Musk described companies that suspended their Twitter ads as “lobbyists against free speech”.
“Twitter suffered lower revenue due to lobbyists’ influence on advertisers,” said Elon Musk.
Read more: After Musk’s statements, fears will erupt over the chaotic speech on “Twitter”.
Meanwhile, the remaining employees are competing to develop new tools that can be sold to users to increase revenue. Most interesting is the revised membership program which, among other benefits, will allow anyone to earn a blue badge if they pay $ 8 a month. Currently, the tags are free and are used as a label for the verified accounts of celebrities, politicians, journalists and other public figures to distinguish them from scammers.
Musk took over Twitter with a large amount of debt and the billionaire said they “have to pay their bills”. The hastily organized Blue Badge program, which may be rolling out as soon as next week, was greeted with fury by popular Twitter users, while Musk and his transition team responded with sarcasm. “We appreciate your feedback, now you pay $ 8,” Musk wrote in response to US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who criticized the idea of making people pay in the name of “free speech”.
Twitter has had a huge drop in revenue, due to activist groups lobbying advertisers, although nothing has changed with content moderation and we’ve done everything we can to placate activists.
Extremely messed up! They are trying to destroy free speech in America.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
Twitter faces pressing problems, cutting costs and increasing cash flow. Company employees said they lack access to basic tools to monitor and remove political misinformation in the days following Musk’s takeover of the company. Musk has promised civil rights leaders that he will bring back content moderation tools that have been blocked for some employees by the end of this week.
Before Twitter began its mass layoffs, employees proactively filed a collective action on Thursday. They said the company was moving too quickly to fire them without warning, in violation of federal and California law. When the details of the layoffs were reported on Friday.
