Elon Musk says Twitter had ‘four months to live’ before mass sackings

Elon Musk says Twitter had ‘four months to live’ before mass sackings

Elon Musk has mentioned Twitter had “four months to live” when he purchased the platform and insisted it wanted to chop prices to reserve it from chapter.

The billionaire proprietor confirmed that about 80% of its workers have been axed since he took over on the helm.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, Musk mentioned the social media platform was “spending money like it’s out of fashion” earlier than he stepped in.

Asked whether or not his strategy to sacking workers members was “haphazard and uncaring,” Musk replied: “I wouldn’t say it was uncaring.

“The situation is, the corporate goes to go bankrupt if we don’t reduce prices instantly.

“This is not a caring, uncaring situation. If the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”

There was a $3-billion “negative cash flow situation,” he mentioned, which left Twitter with “four months to live.”

As a consequence, hundreds of workers throughout the business have been sacked since he purchased the platform for $44 billion in October.

There at the moment are round 1,500 workers members, from just below 8,000 when Musk took over, the boss confirmed.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss was criticized for slicing half the corporate’s full-time workers in a single week, ending distant working and setting an ultimatum for remaining workers to comply with longer, extra intense working patterns or depart.

It additionally led to issues that the platform might wrestle to outlive with the diminished upkeep group and obtainable engineers.

Musk admitted on Wednesday that shutting down one in every of Twitter’s service centres had ended up being “quite catastrophic” because it resulted within the platform shedding a considerable amount of its performance.

But he mentioned that Twitter was now “roughly breaking even” and might be worthwhile once more quickly.

He added: “Depending on how things go, if current trends continue, I think we could be profitable, or to be more precise, cash flow positive this quarter if things keep going well.

“I believe nearly all advertisers have come again or mentioned they’ll come again. There’s only a few exceptions.”

Following his takeover of the platform, many advertisers paused work with the site over concerns about Musk’s approach to content and moderation.

He also revealed legacy blue checkmarks will finally be removed by next week.

Musk said last month that legacy-verified Twitter users would see their blue ticks removed from the service on April 1, unless they paid a monthly fee of $8 to its Twitter Blue subscription operation.

As a result, thousands of the platform’s high-profile users were braced to lose the ticks, which can help verify their identity and distinguish them from imposters.

But the legacy blue ticks have remained in place past the original deadline of April 1.

Musk also said the social media site will update the BBC’s “government-funded media” tag after the broadcaster objected to the label.

The BBC contacted Twitter last week after the designation was attached to the main @BBC account.

The label on the BBC’s official Twitter account has now been changed to “publicly funded media” after the broadcaster objected to the earlier authorities affiliation.

Source: www.anews.com.tr