It’s only four months since Elon Musk bought Twitter and abruptly fired half the staff, but the boss continues to lay off employees and stir controversy, casting doubt on the platform’s survivability. This weekend, the Californian company has laid off at least 200 employees, or 10% of its workforce, according to the American newspaper New York Times.
Since the end of October, between social plans, resignations and engineers fired personally for criticizing Elon Musk, the company had already gone from 7,500 to 2,000 employees, according to estimates by the newspaper and other specialized media such as The Information.
32 million fewer users by 2024
It predicts that the social network, which had more than 368 million monthly users worldwide in 2022, will lose some 32 million between 2022 and 2024, discouraged by the proliferation of toxic content and/or by the increase in number breakdowns. .
Knowing that the leader does not seem to seek to appease advertisers or associations.
This weekend he defended cartoonist Scott Adams, who said he “wants nothing to do” with the black population. Several newspapers announced they would stop publishing his cartoons, but Elon Musk on Sunday accused the US media of being “racist towards whites and Asians” after having “long been racist towards non-white people”.
Brands do not have “trust”
According to this NGO that fights against misinformation, ads from various companies appeared alongside “anti-Semitic accounts who deny the Holocaust.”
The brands do not have “trust” in the owner of the platform, whose audience has always been limited compared to its neighbors, the giants Google and Meta (Facebook, Instagram), he explains.
And this trend will only get worse: “Twitter managed to avoid a drop in its user base in 2022 in part because people wanted to see the saga between Musk and the network live,” he says. But the businessman “is no longer up to date.” That’s what an engineer on the site tried to explain to Elon Musk earlier this month, according to The Verge.
The billionaire had asked the developers why his messages were being read less than before. A computer scientist explained that it was a popularity problem and not an algorithm problem: they fired him.
At the same time, many former employees and companies have filed complaints against the San Francisco company for abusive breach of contract or non-payment of rent and bills.
Twitter Blue does not seduce
And Twitter Blue, the paid subscription launched last year in the greatest confusion as an alternative to ad revenue, isn’t a wise move. As of mid-January, only 180,000 people had subscribed to the formula in the United States, according to The Information.
Esther Crawford, the architect of this product, is among the employees who were thanked this weekend. She had been one of the few managers to show her support for the new boss, she even retweeted a photo where she was seen sleeping in a sleeping bag at her workplace.
Elon Musk, again the world’s richest man according to Bloomberg, is looking for someone to replace him at the helm of Twitter, a move that could help the platform recover.
Until then, “unless I make the decision to terminate the service, Twitter will survive,” thinks Jasmine Enberg. “There is a loyal user base and the network can survive even with technical problems and an unpleasant atmosphere.”
Source: BFM TV
