New Delhi:
Elon Musk addressed Twitter employees for the first time since his announcement of taking over it. Apart from expressing his view that Twitter would need to cut its headcount, he offered a few other new details about his $44 billion planned takeover of the social media company.
The Tesla chief executive told Twitter employees that he wants to raise user base of the company from 229 million to at least 1 billion and said the advertisement shall remain important, taking a u turn from his previous statement ‘Twitter should not serve ads.’
“I think advertising is very important for Twitter,” Musk said. “I’m not against advertising. I would probably talk to the advertisers and say, like, ‘hey, let’s just make sure the ads are as entertaining as possible.'” However, he didn’t offer any update on the deal closing.
In the meeting, he said that he was still trying to learn more about bot and spam accounts on the site, which he considers his biggest concern.
Replying to a question whether he expected layoffs, Musk said that there needed to be “some rationalization of headcount and expenses.”
“Right now, the costs exceed the revenue,” he said, adding “anyone who’s a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about.”
The Twitter staff took to an internal Slack channel in droves during the session, posting memes and complaining that Musk was not providing useful answers on his vision for the business and employee compensation.
The pending takeover of the company has seen considerable skepticism and concern among the San Francisco-based company’s employees, some of whom are worried that new boss will relax rules on certain content.
He also told Twitter employees he believed users should be allowed to say “pretty outrageous things” so long as the content is not illegal. Twitter shares were down 1.5% and Tesla shares slumped more than 9% in afternoon trading.
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