Elon Musk has made a splash since fulfilling his previous offer to buy Twitter. From walking into the company HQ carrying a sink so it could “sink in”, to announce that Twitter was back to being a town square free for all, he has shifted the dynamics of the company. People don’t quite know what to make of this change, but they are excited to see what the future holds.
However, some of the executives under the previous regime are not too excited about his taking over the company. Instead, they are afraid of everything he could find or has found already. With former CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and legal, policy, and trust head Vijaya Gadde already on the chopping block, Musk is looking to trim the fat, and get rid of the old ways.
By doing so, it looked as if the company would be forced to hand over approximately $122 million in severance packages to the trio. This is something Musk won’t let them just walk away with, though. Instead, he has established that this termination was for cause, and as such, they are not due any severance packages as outlined by their contracts.
After Musk acquired the company, Twitter saw its financial figures change dramatically. According to the New York Times, the company will now pay $1 billion per year in interest on its debts. This is a significant jump from the $50 million they paid last year. It comes as a result of Musk taking on about $13 billion in debt to acquire the company. Given they only generated $630 million last year to pay down that debt, the company needs to change a lot of things.
One of the biggest steps will be to regain the trust and confidence of advertisers. With a massive decline in revenue across the tech sector, ad execs want new ways to get their message out there at a lower rate, and directly to their targeted audience. This means Twitter has a new world of opportunities to get them back and to prove that Twitter can once again be the cash cow it once was.
On November 1st, Twitter employees are to receive their stock grants, but Musk already has his new Twitter team working with executives who have survived thus far to lower that. Their goal is to trim 25% of the fat and make the company more financially sound. However, Musk issued a tweet denying deputy managing director Eric Umansky of ProPublica’s claim that he was trying to fire people before the grants would take place.
Umansky based his claim on a report published by the New York Times. Inside the report, investor Ross Gerber indicated that his firm put $1 million into the $44 billion deal, and alleged that half of the Twitter workforce would be terminated.
This isn’t the only cost-cutting measure Musk is putting in place. He also wants to make Twitter Blue a very different platform. As it stands, the subscription-based edition enables additional features on the app, such as the ability to undo tweets and look at certain news articles ad-free. Currently, the program is $4.99 a month, but Musk wants to raise that to $19.99, and include verification of the user.
As it stands, user verification is free. The person needs to make the grade for being a notable person and provide documents to support the authentication claims. According to the Verge, the team making this transition happen will be terminated on November 7th if they don’t have this completed.
Musk is bringing Twitter back to its roots. He’s done with the left-focused censorship and favoritism. He wants to see the company regain the trust of people around the globe and go back to being the “town square” it once was. Where minimal censorship, and the exchange of free ideas reign supreme. It’s about damn time too.
