It all started with a sink. A day before officially taking over Twitter, Elon Musk took him to the online platform’s headquarters in San Francisco. He then tweeted a video with a play on words that matched his mood: “Enter Twitter headquarters,” he wrote, followed by “Let it penetrate,” which can be translated as “let the penetration” also as “let it penetrates.” “Become aware of it.”
Shortly afterwards, according to Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of the world’s richest person, a few dozen employees gathered around him in the tenth-floor cafe. An employee asked if it was true that he wanted to lay off 75% of his staff, as the media said. “No, the number didn’t come from me,” Musk said, complaining about “bullshit” in the media that comes from anonymous sources. He later tweeted about “a lot of cool people” he met at the company. On his profile he called himself “Twit Boss”, another double meaning, as it can mean both “Twitter boss” and “idiot boss”.
1,500 instead of 7,500 employees
What started out fun and comforting that day quickly became uncomfortable. On October 27, 2022, at the same time the $44 billion acquisition was completed, Musk had former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and several other top executives fired and escorted out of the Twitter building. administration. And a radical downsizing of the workforce would begin, reaching the dimensions that Musk contested.
After a few months there were still around 1,500 employees left, before the sale there were more than 7,500. The new owner made it clear to those who remained that a completely different wind would blow beneath him. He asked them to expressly declare in digital format with a click of the mouse that they wanted to work “extremely hardcore” from now on. Anyone who refuses will be fired.
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It was expected from the beginning that, with Musk as owner, difficult times would lie ahead for Twitter. But a year later, the company is almost unrecognizable. Musk not only decimated the workforce, but also gave the platform an entirely new look, culminating in its renaming to X.
He also seemed to never miss an opportunity to scare advertisers and therefore Twitter’s significant sources of income. He has repeatedly sparked controversy with provocative and politically charged statements. He also gave the motto of monitoring the platform’s content less rigorously and allowing more questionable materials. The teams responsible for moderation have been reduced. Observers considered it an inevitable consequence that large amounts of false information had recently spread about X following terrorist acts by Islamic Hamas in Israel.
Experts see a “disclosure oath”
For Jasmine Enberg of the market research group Insider Intelligence, this amounts to a disclosure oath. After all, Twitter showed its strength as an information provider, especially in the midst of major news events. Enberg’s verdict on Musk is blunt: “There really couldn’t be anyone worse for Twitter.”
The company had already gone through many difficulties before the sale, but the multibillionaire’s decisions plunged it into an existential crisis. A year after the ownership change, Enberg sees little future for the platform. “In my opinion, the end is near.”