Twitter performed an surprising spherical of layoffs this weekend as the corporate struggles with plunging income and aggressive cost-cutting beneath CEO Elon Musk.
The Info first reported on the layoffs, saying the corporate let go of no less than 50 workers on Saturday throughout completely different departments, together with engineers who assist preserve the social community working.
The layoffs additionally included “hardcore Musk loyalists,” tweeted Zoë Schiffer, who covers the corporate carefully for Platformer. She added that the layoffs included “a ton of surprises.” For example, she tweeted, among the many laid off was Esther Crawford, chief govt of Twitter Funds. In early November, Crawford tweeted, “When your staff is pushing around the clock to make deadlines typically you #SleepWhereYouWork.”
One senior product supervisor, Martijn de Kuijper, tweeted that he’d been locked out of his e-mail account. De Kuijper, who based Revue, an editorial publication software Twitter acquired in 2021, tweeted: “Waking as much as discover I’ve been locked out of my e-mail. Appears like I’m let go. Now my Revue journey is de facto over.”
Since Musk took over the corporate in October final yr, Twitter’s headcount has fallen by over 70%, and its chief income, promoting, has fallen considerably.
The corporate has seen some technical glitches amid the turmoil. On Feb. 8, Twitter customers throughout North America have been unable to ship messages, with an error message saying they have been “over the each day restrict for sending tweets.”
“Twitter will not be working as anticipated for a few of you. Sorry for the difficulty. We’re conscious and dealing to get this mounted,” the corporate tweeted.
Musk has tried to generate income in different methods moreover promoting, however to date these efforts have carried out little to enhance the corporate’s monetary place. Amongst these efforts has been Twitter Blue, a month-to-month subscription service that features a blue verification test mark. That service bought off to a rocky begin when trolls used it to impersonate manufacturers and celebrities. In line with The Info, by the center of final month solely about 180,000 customers had signed up for the service.
Many advertisers have been cautious of the place Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” would take the platform. That didn’t cease Musk from wading into varied sensitive subjects this weekend, even amid the layoffs.
Musk got here to the protection of Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert,” after newspapers throughout the nation canceled the cartoon for feedback they referred to as “racist,” “hateful,” and “discriminatory.” Adams had described people who find themselves Black as members of “a hate group” from which white folks ought to “get away.”
Musk tweeted: “For a *very* very long time, US media was racist towards non-white folks, now they’re racist towards whites & Asians. Identical factor occurred with elite faculties & excessive faculties in America. Perhaps they will attempt not being racist.”
Musk additionally this weekend applauded a Saturday Night time Dwell opening monologue by Woody Harrelson bearing on COVID vaccines and the pandemic. The actor talked about one of many “craziest scripts” he’s learn.
“So the film goes like this,” the actor defined. “The largest drug cartels on the planet get collectively and purchase up all of the media and all of the politicians and power all of the folks on the planet to remain locked of their properties. And folks can solely come out in the event that they take the cartel’s medicine and preserve taking them again and again.”
“I threw the script away,” he then joked. “I imply, who was going to consider that loopy concept? Being pressured to do medicine? I do this voluntarily all day.”
Should tweeted in reply, “So primarily based. Good work @nbcsnl!”
When one Twitter wrote, “Prepare for the meltdowns,” Musk replied: “Perhaps they [media outlets] don’t understand that their propaganda is fallacious?”
Musk additionally chimed in on the origins of the pandemic after the Wall Road Journal reported Sunday that the U.S. Power Division was leaning towards the COVID lab-leak concept, becoming a member of the FBI in that regard.
When fellow PayPal alum David Sacks shared the article and tweeted that Anthony Fauci, former director of the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses, and others have been behind a disinformation marketing campaign concerning the lab origins of the coronavirus, Musk replied, “Precisely.”
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