Elon Musk has dissolved Twitter board of directors, cementing his control over the company. The movement occurs three days after the purchase of the social network was formalized, according to a document sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, for its acronym in English).
The nine members that made up the board of directors of Twitter leave all their positions “in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement”, a fact that was expected after the tycoon dismissed several senior executives of the platform last Thursday, including the Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, Head of Legal and Policy Affairs Vijaya Gadde and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal. The body will now have a single member, Musk himself.
The billionaire businessman is not wasting any time, and has already said that he will implement some changes in the company. To narrow down his plan, Musk has the help of Tesla engineers (more than 50, according to CNBC) who have joined Twitter as advisers. He would also have turned to other professionals from his company Neuralink and to friends and advisers, such as David Sacks, an investor in technology companies and former director of operations at PayPal.
User verification
In the last hours it has been known that the social network will review its user verification process. This was said on Sunday in a tweet by Musk himself. “The entire verification process is being renewed at this time,” he said without giving more details, but, as The Verge reported shortly after, the businessman plans to charge users interested in obtaining and maintaining their blue check $20 a month. of verified accounts.
The aforementioned medium specifies that the plans of the new Twitter is to raise the subscription price of Twitter Blue, a subscription service to the platform that offers exclusive access to premium functions and that verifies users, from $4.99 per month to $19.99. The Platformer blog, on the other hand, reported that the current rate would be maintained. Twitter Blue launched in June 2021 and includes an option to edit tweets, remove ads, or change the layout.
Currently, this subscription is only available in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and its launch has not prevented the vast majority of the social network’s income from continuing to come from advertising. Now, it seems that Musk’s goal is to launch the service to everyone in order to meet his goal of increasing subscriptions so that they contribute half of the company’s revenue.
Depending on the plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue check mark. Musk would have even warned the workers who are involved in the project that they will be fired if the deadline of November 7 to launch the function is not met, forcing them to work “24 hours a day, 7 days a week”, according to the FT. Until now, the verification process has been done free of charge, at the initiative of the user interested in having the badge, details Europa Press, and it is estimated that there are around half a million verified users.
take back vine
The new owner of Twitter would also have instructed the social network’s engineers to work on recovering Vine, the short-form video app that the platform closed in 2016, after acquiring it four years earlier. According to Axios, the service could be ready by the end of this year.
Musk launched a poll on his Twitter account last Sunday asking his followers if he should revive the app. And after getting more votes in favor than against, he launched another question: “What could we do to surpass TikTok?”. The tycoon is not unaware of the current growth and power of TikTok, with more than 1,000 million users compared to more than 200 on Twitter, which has forced Meta and YouTube to follow in its footsteps and introduce short video services.
One big difference between TikTok and Vine is that the former uses an algorithm to serve videos while the latter relies on a user’s social following, Axios warns.
layoffs in sight
Along with the development of the business, the CEO of Tesla advances in his adjustment plan. Different US media have advanced that he plans massive layoffs, in which he would include, among other profiles, engineers who have not recently contributed to developing code in the company.
Although The Washington Post reported days ago that Musk plans to lay off 75% of the Twitter workforce, the controversial businessman denied this figure, but has not specified any details on whether he will make adjustments (currently the social network has 7,500 employees), to what profile of professional will affect and when it will be carried out. The manager has said in a tweet these days that “it seems that there is [en Twitter] 10 people managing for every person coding,” hinting that there will be cuts.
Media such as The New York Times have reported that the layoffs will begin this week, and according to two people familiar with the situation quoted by the Financial Times, Musk would have asked his advisers to identify who should stay and who should be fired. One of the sources of this last newspaper assures that the ultimate objective of the founder of Tesla is to fire those who do not support him as a leader.
Among the people the tycoon has recruited to audit Twitter is Jake Nocon, who is part of Tesla’s surveillance unit. According to CNBC, Nocon previously worked for Uber and Nisos, a security company that had a multimillion-dollar contract with Tesla to identify insider threats and monitor company critics. “On Twitter, Musk counts on his lieutenants and his loyalists to decide who to kick out or keep on the social network,” this medium adds.
Investigate Saudi involvement
Amid widespread scrutiny of Musk’s Twitter takeover, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy has signaled that he has asked the US government to review the national security implications of taking over the social network given the large turnout. on Twitter that they have companies linked to Saudi Arabia, the BBC reports.
“We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in suppressing political speech and impacting US politics, are now the second largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy wrote on Twitter. “There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS [el Comité de Inversión Extranjera en los Estados Unidos] I should do a review.”
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Kingdom Holding Company are the second largest investor in the new private company, according to a document filed with the US government.
