Although Twitter has always been the chaotic little sister of social media, ever since Elon Musk took control, it seems like nothing but chaos has happened at the massive social media company. Elon Musk owns and runs both automaker Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, and now owns Twitter.
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Business buyout
The drama began when Elon Musk signed a deal to acquire the company last April. He has since tried to back out of his acquisition deal, leading Twitter to sue him. Months of prior wrangling took place between Twitter and Elon Musk, and the latter conceded and closed the deal before a court-ordered deadline and bought the company for $44 million on October 27.
Layoffs
As soon as Elon Musk took over as CEO of Twitter, he started laying off employees. He ended up laying off more than half the staff and most of the contractors. Musk gave the few remaining employees an ultimatum: Either work within his intense new culture or leave. Unfortunately, it seems that most have decided to leave. What's more, the employees were laid off just before Thanksgiving.
Since the layoffs, many major brands have pulled back from advertising on Twitter. Others have minimized their Twitter ad spending rather than withdrawing entirely and provoking a showdown with Musk. According to the Financial Times' anonymous source, Musk personally called the CEOs of major brands who withdrew.
Changes at Twitter
Many changes have taken place at Twitter since the millionaire took control, such as changing moderation policies on the platform and lifting the ban on extremist accounts that have been banned throughout Twitter's history. Twitter. Also, and this is the one most people have been talking about, it's deciding who gets audited and who doesn't.
Musk suggested three different colors to signify verification, gold for businesses, gray for governments, and blue for individuals, “celebrity or not.” According to Mr. Musk, a second, smaller logo indicates that the individual belongs to an organization if he or she is “verified as such by that organization.”
He also toyed with the idea of a paid subscription to Twitter Blue, at $8 per month, but this was not without its problems, as the line between authenticated people and paid accounts was blurred. It has also caused many problems with people impersonating celebrities and companies causing unrest.
Elon Musk also plans to make Twitter a “universal app,” as he called it, with features like encrypted direct messages, long-form tweets and payment options. It will turn into something that barely resembles the Twitter we know and love.
Recruitment
Now that thousands of its employees have evacuated Twitter, concerns have arisen about outages, mass disruptions and hacks. However, despite the number of people leaving the site, Elon Musk claimed that engagement is up on Twitter, with notable new signups and active minutes hitting an all-time high.
This was all shared as a ploy (or perhaps a plea) to bring in new employees, as he tweeted the slides saying “We're hiring” after weeks of firing his employees, some of them resigning. them, and others defecting to other social media companies. So, at this point, will people be interested in recruiting through the social media company? Or will Musk's efforts ultimately lead to the company's downfall?
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