Elon Musk has made radical changes at Twitter. Now he says only 20% of staff following his takeover are still employed – and just announced a new subscription service to make money for the struggling company.
Elon Musk has laid off or fired 80% of original Twitter staff
In a recent, rare interview with the BBC, Elon Musk told the British broadcaster that Twitter now only has 1,500 employees, down from just below 8,000 who were employed at the time of his acquisition, a reduction of roughly 80% of the company’s staff, CNN reported.
Musk said Twitter was facing “a $3 billion negative cash flow situation” when he acquired the company for $44 billion last October, and “drastic action” was needed. In terms of the layoffs, he says it’s “not fun at all” and sometimes can be “painful.”
“This is not a caring [or] uncaring situation,” Musk said. “It’s like, if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”
Musk says Twitter is now “roughly” breaking even and advertisers are returning to the social media platform.
Elon Musk angering many, including BBC and NPR
A report last month found that Twitter was now worth less than half of what Musk paid for the company, as users have left the platform in droves since his takeover.
One source of ongoing contention between Twitter users and the company, since it has come under Musk’s control, has been the so-called “blue” verification check marks that let people know the account was of public interest and authentic, and which used to be free for notable users, CNN reported.
In April, Musk announced that Twitter was going to wind down the program and remove legacy verified checkmarks. Going forward, users would have to sign up for “Twitter Blue,” a subscription service that costs $8 a month or $84 per year for the verified checkmarks.
Musks ticks off BBC and NPR
Recently, Twitter labeled the BBC and NPR as “government-funded” news organizations. NPR saw the label as an intention to undermine its credibility, and quit the platform over the snafu, the Associated Press reported.
In response to NPR’s exit, Musk replied: “Defund@NPR.”
However, Musk did tell the BBC in an interview he would update the Twitter labels for BBC and NPR to “publicly funded,” Yahoo! News reported.
Twitter launches new subscription service for users to earn money
This week, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced that the platform’s users will be able to offer subscription-based content to their followers for a small fee. Musk said Twitter would not take a cut for the next 12 months, Gizmodo reported. It’s basically a rebranding of Twitter’s previous “Super Follow” function.
Each content creator can select which price tier they want to offer their subscribers, from a Twitter-specified selection of a $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 subscription price per month, and followers will select which type of subscriber content they want.
Twitter will forgo its percentage for 12 months then, thereafter, content creators will receive 70% for subscriptions on iOS & Android (Twitter gets 30%), and approximately 92% on web subscriptions (could be higher, depending on the payment processor).
It’s the latest move by Musk and Twitter to add more ways the social media platform can earn revenue.
