2023-04-26 02:19:55
One year. This is the time it took Elon Musk to convert Twitter in an unrecognizable social network. After months of noise, a lot of noise, the tycoon announced on April 25, 2022 that he had reached a historic agreement to gain control of his fetish social network in exchange for the incredible price of 44,000 million dollars. It didn’t take long, barely a couple of weeks, before the deal, which was surprising considering the very poor figures of the ‘app’ business, fell to the tycoon. To the point that he even tried to break it. Something that, finally, was not possible.
When the agreement was about to go to court, Musk ended up giving his arm to twist. He took effective control of the platform at the end of October and, since then, he has not stopped making relevant changes to the application. Here are some of the most important.
Goodbye to half of the squad
Before Elon Musk took over, Twitter had roughly a few 7,500 employees scattered all over the world. Since the arrival of the tycoon, practically all of the platform’s board of directors has been taking the exit door, including Parag Agrawall, who had replaced Jack Dorsey at the head of the company just a year ago.
Added to the departure of the managers was the dismissal of approximately 50% of the workforce at the beginning of November. A week later, hundreds of other employees chose to leave the company due, in large part, to the work policy that Musk hoped to impose on the social network, which involved working 40 hours a week in the company’s offices.
Since those first weeks, the casualties on the social network have not stopped increasing. It is currently estimated that Twitter is operating with just under 2,000 workers.
An ‘app’ that breaks
The social network suffered several widespread outages during the month of February and March. Only in the second month of the year there were 4, according to the specialized site NetBlocks. In recent months, several former employees of the social network have drawn attention to how difficult it is to keep an application running that is used by some 300 million people every month with such a small workforce and, in some cases, a lack of experience.
business problems
Of course, Twitter is far from being a thriving business. It was not before Musk took over the property and, much less now. The social network’s ad revenue began to decline markedly just days after Musk took control.
As reported by ‘Bloomberg’ a month ago, the ten main investors in advertising on Twitter have reduced their spending on the social network by 90%. It is estimated that the business driven by ads, the most important for any business similar to that of the application, has already been reduced by a total of 50% by the end of 2022.
Musk himself made it clear a few weeks ago that the app currently costs about half of the $44 billion he paid in October. In an interview with ‘BBC’ he also dropped that, although he does not regret the purchase, he would be open to selling Twitter if the right person appeared.
The chaos of verified accounts
Last Friday, Twitter made another attempt in its plan to remove the check marks from all those accounts that do not pay for the Twitter Blue subscription service, which is priced at 11 euros per month if you sign up through your smartphone. The result was chaos, as was predictable. In the last few hours, some users and companies have once again worn the badge without having to pay the social network for it. It is not entirely clear what is the use of having a sign of this type if, really, the only thing it shows is that you pay to have it.
«The blue tick has become a symbol of prestige. Currently, many companies, such as ‘The New York Times’, have announced that they do not intend to pay to wear it. If many follow the example, in the end it will become an icon to pretend. A boomerang effect could take place that ends up affecting the objectives of the social network”, Ferran Lalueza, professor of Communication at the Open University of Catalonia and an expert in social networks, recently stated in this regard.
Looking at the future
Elon Musk’s goal is to continue transforming Twitter over the next few months. The tycoon is clear that he wants the application to become a ‘super app’, a tool with which the user can do practically anything. And among those things could be the sending of money between users in the style of tools like PayPal. According to the ‘Financial Times’, the businessman has already applied for the necessary licenses so that the application can operate in this way. The functionality could be available in the United States in 2024.
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