It has been a week now the world’s richest man has another asset to his net worth. Elon Musk since the takeover of the microblogging site has been making major changes, that have received widespread criticism globally. The latest among his major moves was sacking more than 50 percent staff globally in the name of revenue challenges the popular social platform faced.
“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” said Musk in a Tweet on Friday as he laid off several employees with an email subject, ‘Your Role at Twitter’ on Friday morning. The mail read- “If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email. If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with the next steps via your personal email”.
Here are five changes that Musk announced in seven days of ownership
Very soon after taking over, the first layoffs Twitter Inc witnessed were of top executives like CEO Parag Agarwal, CFO Ned Segal, and Legal affairs and policy chief Vijay Gadde amongst a few of them who were fired. The latest sacking that began on Friday aims to cut the workforce by half.
Premium subscription- The BLUE tick became a premium feature of the microblogging site as Musk announced a fee of $8 per month for the verified badge and its Blue services.
Advertisements- Big brands like GE, General Mills, Audi of America, Oreo maker Mondeles Intl, Pfizer, and Ford to name a few distant themselves from Twitter pausing their adds on the social platform. The drawback came after Musk tweeted he wanted Twitter to be the most respected advertising platform.
The content strategy of the social platform also came into the loop as Musk announced to constitute a content moderation council with ‘widely diverse viewpoints’.
Pay-per-view- Twitter Inc says it is working on a feature where users will have to pay for viewing the videos. Per se, the microblogging platform will take a cut of the proceeds and let viewers watch videos.
Homepage Changes- Musk requested that logged-out users visiting the app or site be redirected to the Explore page.
Vine Robot- In a poll on the platform to bring back Vine, nearly 5 million participated and 70 percent of them agreed to reprisal. Following this Musk has instructed the engineers to work on a Vine reboot that could be ready by year-end.