TPeople wouldn’t have said if all the paperwork for the deal, which was originally worth $44 billion, had been signed or if the deal had been done. But they said that Musk was in charge of the social media platform and fired CEO Parag AgrawalAnd the Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal And the Senior Legal Counsel Vijaya Jade. No one wanted to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the deal.
Departures come only hours before the deadline set by A Delaware Judge to complete the deal on Friday. She threatened to set a trial date if no agreement was reached.
Although they came quickly, the major employee moves were widely expected and almost certainly the first of many major changes that the mercurial Tesla CEO will be making.
Musk privately clashed with Agrawal in April, just before he decided to bid for the company, according to text messages later disclosed in court filings.
He used to about the same time Twitter To criticize Gadi, the company’s attorney. His tweets followed a wave of harassment against Gadi from other Twitter accounts. For Jade, an 11-year-old Twitter employee who also heads public policy and safety, the harassment included racist and misogynistic attacks, as well as calls for Musk to fire her. On Thursday, after her expulsion, the harassment tweets flared up again.
Musk’s changes are aimed at increasing Twitter’s subscriber base and increasing revenue.
In his first big move earlier on Thursday, Musk tried to calm apprehensive Twitter advertisers, saying he was buying the platform to help humanity and didn’t want it to become a “free hell for everyone.”
The letter appears intended to address concerns among advertisers – Twitter’s main source of revenue – that Musk’s plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderate content will open the door to more toxicity online and alienate users.
“The reason I own Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a shared digital city arena, where a wide range of beliefs can be discussed in a healthy way, without resorting to violence,” Musk wrote. A letter to the CEO of Tesla, who usually lays out his thoughts in one-line tweets.
“There is currently a high risk of social media splintering into the far right and far left echo chambers that are breeding more hatred and dividing our society,” he continued.
Musk has previously expressed his distaste for advertising and Twitter’s reliance on it, suggesting a greater focus on other business models such as paid subscriptions that won’t allow large companies to dictate policy on how social media operates. But he assured advertisers on Thursday that he wanted Twitter to be “the most respected advertising platform in the world.”
The note is transformed from muskPinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said Twitter’s position is that Twitter unfairly infringes free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content.
But she also said it’s a realization that a lack of content moderation is bad for business, putting Twitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers.
“You don’t want a place where consumers are bombarded with things they don’t want to hear about, and the platform has no responsibility,” Yildirim said.
Musk said Twitter should be “warm and welcoming to everyone” and enable users to choose what experience they want to have.
Friday deadline to close the deal ordered by Delaware Chancery Court In early October. It is the latest step in a battle that began in April with Musk signing a deal to acquire Twitter, and then trying to back out, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to go ahead with the acquisition. If the two sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, the next step could be a November trial that could force Judge Musk to seal the deal.
But Musk was indicating that the deal is underway. He traveled to corporate headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday with a ceramic sink, changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit,” and tweeted, “Enter Twitter HQ – let this sink in!”
Overnight, the New York Stock Exchange notified investors that it would suspend trading in Twitter shares before the opening bell on Friday in anticipation of the company going private under Musk.
Musk is expected to speak to Twitter employees directly on Friday if the deal is finalized, according to an internal memo cited in several media outlets. Despite the internal confusion and low morale associated with fears of layoffs or the dismantling of the company’s culture and operations, Twitter leaders at least this week have externally welcomed the arrival of Musk and his messages.
Senior Sales Executive Sarah PersonnetThe company’s chief customer officer said she had a “fantastic discussion” with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.
“Our continued commitment to advertisers’ brand integrity remains unchanged,” Personnet tweeted Thursday. “Look forward to the future!”
Musk’s apparent enthusiasm for visiting Twitter headquarters this week was in sharp contrast to one of his earlier suggestions: The building should be converted into a homeless shelter because so few employees actually work there.
The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told potential investors that he plans to fire three-quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 employees when he becomes an owner of the company. The newspaper quoted unnamed documents and sources familiar with the deliberations.
Musk has spent months mocking “spam bots” on Twitter and at times making contradictory statements about Twitter’s problems and how to fix them. But he has shared few concrete details about his plans for the social media platform.
Thursday’s note shows advertisers a new focus on ad revenue, particularly Twitter’s need to serve more “relevant ads” — which typically means targeted ads that rely on collecting and analyzing users’ personal information.
Yildirim said that unlike Facebook, Twitter was not very good at targeting ads to what users wanted to see. She said Musk’s message indicates that he wants to fix that.
Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said Musk has good reason to avoid a massive change in Twitter’s ad business because Twitter’s revenue has taken a hit from a weak economy, months of uncertainty surrounding Musk’s proposed takeover, changing consumer behavior and the fact that “there is no Another source of income is waiting in the wings.”
“Even a little easing of content moderation on the platform is sure to intimidate advertisers, many of whom are already finding Twitter’s brand security tools unavailable compared to other social platforms,” Enberg said.
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