AP – Billionaire Elon Musk (AP, pic below) is already floating major changes for Twitter – and faces major hurdles as he begins his first week as owner of the social-media platform.
Twitter’s new owner fired the company’s board of directors and made himself the board’s sole member, according to a company filing on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk later said on Twitter that the new board set-up is “temporary”, but he didn’t provide any details.
He’s also testing the waters on asking users to pay for verification. A venture capitalist working with Musk tweeted a poll asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue check mark that Twitter has historically used to verify higher-profile accounts so other users know it’s really them. Musk, whose account is verified, replied, “Interesting.”
Critics have derided the mark, often granted to celebrities, politicians, business leaders and journalists, as an elite status symbol.
But Twitter also uses the blue check mark to verify activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, as an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts that are impersonating people.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted on Sunday in response to a user who asked for help getting verified.
Having taken ownership of the social media service, Musk has invited a group of tech-world friends and investors to help guide the San Francisco-based company’s transformation, which is likely to include a shake-up of its staff. Musk last week fired CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives. There’s been uncertainty about if and when he could begin larger-scale layoffs.
“I do think there will be a lot of layoffs,” said Assistant Finance Professor at San Jose State University Matthew Faulkner. Faulkner noted the need for cost-cutting after Musk bought Twitter for a premium and the platform’s longtime struggles trying to turn a profit. But Musk might also want as quickly as possible to weed out employees who don’t believe in his mission so that those who stay feel more secure.
“You don’t want to have frantically scared employees working for you,” Faulkner said. “That doesn’t motivate people.” Those who have revealed they are helping Musk include Sriram Krishnan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which pledged back in the spring to chip in to Musk’s plan to buy the company and take it private. Krishnan, who is also a former Twitter product executive, said in a tweet that it is “a hugely important company and can have great impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen”.
Venture capitalist Jason Calacanis who tweeted the poll about whether users would pay for verification, said over the weekend he is “hanging out at Twitter a bit and simply trying to be as helpful as possible during the transition”. Calacanis said the team already “has a very comprehensive plan to reduce the number of (and visibility of) bots, spammers, and bad actors on the platform”. And in the Twitter poll, he asked if users would pay between USD5 and USD15 monthly to “be verified and get a blue check mark” on Twitter. Twitter is currently free for most users because it depends on advertising for its revenue.
Musk agreed to buy Twitter for USD44 billion in April but it wasn’t until last Thursday evening that he finally closed the deal, after his attempts to back out of it led to a protracted legal fight with the company. Musk’s lawyers are now asking the Delaware Chancery Court to throw out the case, according to a court filing made public on Monday.
The two sides were supposed to go to trial in November if they didn’t close the deal by the end of last week.
Musk has made a number of pronouncements since early this year about how to fix Twitter, and it remains unclear which proposals he will prioritise.
He has promised to cut back some of Twitter’s content restrictions to promote free speech, but said on Friday that no major decisions on content or reinstating of banned accounts will be made until a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints is put in place.
