Two sources with knowledge of the situation reported Thursday night that Elon Musk had taken control of Twitter and fired the CEO, CFO, and top lawyer for the firm.
The individuals remained mum on whether all the necessary legal documents for the $44 billion purchase had been signed or if it had been closed. The CEO, Parag Agrawal, the CFO, and the Chief Legal Counsel, Vijaya Gadde, were reportedly fired by Musk, who is in charge of the social networking site. Because the transaction was so delicate, neither individual wanted to be named.
The departures occur only a few hours before a judge in Delaware set a deadline for the purchase to be completed on Friday. If a deal couldn’t be struck, she threatened to hold a trial.
The significant personnel changes, which happened rapidly but were widely anticipated, are almost definitely the first of many significant adjustments the erratic Tesla CEO will make.
According to text exchanges eventually made public in court filings, Musk and Agrawal had a private argument in April, just before Musk decided to make a bid for the firm.
At around the same time, he attacked the company’s lead attorney Gadde on Twitter. Following his remarks, Gadde received a barrage of abuse from other Twitter accounts. The vitriol for Gadde, an 11-year Twitter employee who also oversees public policy and safety, included racial and gender-based insults as well as demands for Musk to terminate her. The nasty tweets resumed on Thursday after she was fired.
The modifications made by Musk are intended to grow Twitter’s subscriber base and revenue.
Musk said earlier on Thursday that he is buying the network to aid humanity and doesn’t want it to turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” in an effort to assuage wary Twitter advertisers. This was his first significant move.
The letter looked to be geared at allaying worries among advertisers, who make up Twitter’s main source of income, that Musk’s promises to support free speech by reducing content moderation will unleash a wave of online ugliness and drive users away.
The Tesla CEO typically expresses his thoughts in one-line tweets but Musk wrote in an unusually lengthy message: “The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
“There is now a great danger that social media will split into far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers that fuel further hatred and split our society,” he continued.
Musk has already voiced his dislike of advertising and Twitter’s reliance on it, urging a greater focus on other business models like paid subscriptions that prevent major corporations from dictating how social media is used. However, he gave advertisers assurance on Thursday that he wants Twitter to be “the most respected advertising platform in the world.”
According to Pinar Yildirim, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Musk’s opinion that Twitter is unfairly restricting free expression rights by removing false information or graphic content has changed as a result of the memo.
It’s also recognition, she added, that not moderating content is bad for business and could result in Twitter losing advertising and subscribers. Consumers shouldn’t be inundated with information they don’t want to hear about, and the platform shouldn’t be held accountable, said Yildirim.
According to Musk, Twitter should be “warm and friendly to all” and provide users the option to customize their experience.
The Delaware Chancery Court mandated the Friday deadline for the transaction’s completion in early October. It is the most recent development in a conflict that started in April when Musk agreed to buy Twitter but later tried to back out. As a result, Twitter sued the Tesla CEO to force him to complete the transaction. The next step might be a trial in November where a judge might order Musk to finalize the contract if the two parties fail to fulfill the deadline on Friday.
Musk, however, has been indicating that the transaction will go through. Wednesday, holding a porcelain sink, he entered the company’s San Francisco offices. He then updated his Twitter handle to “Chief Twit,” tweeting, “Entering Twitter HQ – let it sink in!”
In addition, the New York Stock Exchange informed investors overnight that it will halt trading in Twitter shares before Friday’s opening bell in anticipation of Musk’s plan to take the firm private.
According to an internal document quoted by numerous media sites, Musk is anticipated to talk to Twitter staff members directly on Friday if the sale is completed. Despite internal strife and low morale brought on by worries about layoffs or the deconstruction of the company’s operations and culture, Twitter management has at least publicly welcomed Musk’s arrival and messages this week.
Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer, and top sales executive, claimed to have had a “wonderful chat” with Musk on Wednesday and seemed to support his message to advertisers on Thursday.
Personette tweeted on Thursday that “our continuous commitment to brand safety for advertisers is unaltered.” “I’m excited about the future!”
In stark contrast to one of his earlier recommendations—that the facility is converted into a homeless shelter because so few people really worked there—obvious Musk’s excitement about visiting Twitter’s headquarters this week.
The Washington Post reported last week that Musk had informed potential investors that, should he acquire Twitter, he would lay off approximately 75 percent of its 7,500 employees. The newspaper cited records and unidentified persons who were acquainted with the discussion.
Musk has criticized Twitter’s “spam bots” for months and made occasionally inconsistent statements about the issues with Twitter and how to fix them. However, he hasn’t provided many specifics about his ambitions for the social networking site.
The memo sent to advertisers on Thursday reveals a renewed focus on generating revenue from advertising, particularly the need for Twitter to offer more “relevant ads,” which are often targeted ads that depend on gathering and analyzing user data.
According to Yildirim, Twitter has not been effective in focusing ads on what people want to see, in contrast to Facebook. According to her, Musk’s message shows that he intends to correct it.
Musk has good reason to hold off on a major overhaul of Twitter’s advertising sector, according to Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg, as the company’s revenues have been negatively impacted by the deteriorating economy, months of uncertainty surrounding Musk’s proposed takeover, shifting consumer habits, and the lack of “any other revenue source waiting in the wings.”
Enberg asserted that advertisers, many of whom already consider Twitter’s brand safety safeguards to be inadequate in comparison to other social platforms, would be alarmed by even a modest relaxation of content filtering on the platform.
