Elon Musk has fired as much as half of Twitter’s 7,500-strong workforce. This is a major cost-cutting overhaul.
Musk’s vision for Twitter is not particularly complex. He views it as a software platform first, and only then as a social network.
The company should care about the plumbing that lies behind the posts, not the posts themselves and how they connect to each other. The obvious corollary is that Twitter’s halls should filled with coders, all the “content” people are superfluous to the company’s mission.
Musk has already stamped his mark on Twitter since closing the acquisition a week ago, asking staffers to work around the clock on select projects. Twitter plans to offer a premium $8 a month subscription service that will verify users, boost the visibility of their posts and allow them to see fewer advertisements.
Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org
He had overhauled the management team, firing executives including Twitter chief Parag Agrawal. He brought in a small group of trusted advisers, including his personal lawyer Alex Spiro and venture capitalist David Sacks, to help him assess how to run the company.
The cost-cutting measures come as Musk faces concerns from advertisers, the source of a majority of Twitter’s revenues, who worry that his plans to loosen content moderation rules on the platform will lead to a rise in inappropriate content. Musk told brands he planned to offer different tiers of content. moderation, similar to a film rating system, according to three people familiar with the conversation Half of the company’s ad revenues come from the United States but over 80% of its users live elsewhere – most of them in countries that don’t have the constitutional and legal protections for speech that Americans such as Musk take for granted.
Musk might think the Twitter he bought crimped free speech. But governments from Turkey to Nigeria to India disagree. They worry that Twitter brings American notions of what constitutes free expression into their societies, reducing their ability to police speech.
Cutting staff is one step. Increasing revenue is the other. The latter is more difficult than the former. But for Musk the quickest way to pay down his USD44 billion acquisition is his major concern. So, who cares if some (staff) have to go. That’s capitalism!
References:
Elon Musk plans to cut up half of Twitter workforce, Hannah Murphy and James Fontanella-Khan, Financial Times, Nov 3, 2022
Twitter layoffs will shrink free speech globally, Mihir Sharma, The Star, 9 Nov 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment