Is Elon Musk Killing Twitter?

Twitter has changed dramatically under the billionaire Elon Musk and few people – even his supporters – say it is positive changes. In recent weeks, government agencies, news sources and powerful social media influencers have questioned the usefulness of the platform, after several organizations publicly abandoned their accounts or tell users they can’t rely on Twitter for urgent information.

Advertisers have fled because of Mr Musk’s policy changes and erratic behavior on the platform, which has caused ad revenue to drop by as much as 75% in recent months, according to one person who agreed to share the problem. internally on condition of anonymity.

The layoffs have left Twitter with a staff of just 1,500 – an 80% reduction – and rife with bugs and glitches that can shut down the site for hours. Meanwhile, Mr. Musk admits the value of the company has dropped to less than half of the $44 billion he paid six months ago.

” It’s a pretty stressful situation ,” Musk said in an interview last week with the BBC about his first half year in charge. But he said advertisers are coming back and he predicts it will be possible to “break even”. “ Overall, I think the trend is very good .”

Billionaire Musk is famous as a businessman with “Midas’s golden hand”, but his erratic decisions at Twitter have caused him to lose part of his aura. “ I am disappointed that he seems to have made a lot of mistakes with Twitter. I don’t think the platform has gotten any better ,” said one person who worked anonymously for billionaire Musk, who initially cheered the takeover.

Even Mr. Musk’s journey to acquire the website has been dramatic. It began more than a year ago, when it was revealed that Mr Musk, then the richest man in the world, had bought more than 9% of Twitter’s shares, making him its largest individual shareholder.

Days later, he wrote that Twitter’s failure to adhere to its free speech principles – possibly related to its policy of banning extremist accounts – “fundamentally undermines democracy.” He accused Twitter’s leaders of harboring fake accounts and pledged to “beat them up!”. Under his leadership, he said, Twitter will seek to “authenticate all real people”.

About six months later, Musk has kept some of those promises. He has restored many previously banned accounts, including that of former US president Donald Trump. He said that this week Twitter will largely switch to a paid subscription model for verifying accounts. But some of these decisions are dramatically altering the site model and have unintended consequences, such as system crashes.

Former employees say Musk has wiped out many of the company’s core functions, such as assessing the risks of new product launches and deleting some user data in accordance with federal requests. They said Twitter’s internals were in turmoil, with little consistent strategy beyond being forced to respond to Musk’s whims.

To the frustration of some users, Twitter is also trying to charge in every way. The company recently announced that it will restrict access to application programming interfaces (APIs), a software tool that allows outside researchers and developers to collect and analyze data. , and the company will charge a fee in most cases.

Twitter’s charging efforts are intended, in part, to help pay for the site. Billionaire Musk’s acquisition of the platform, financed with a combination of loans and equity commitments – including from his own assets – has cost the company about $1 billion. 23.4 trillion VND) annual profit. Additionally, according to data from Pathmatics, which analyzes brands, Twitter’s top 61 advertisers cut their ads by 80% or more in the 12 months before March 2023.

The company currently charges for various features of the site, including Twitter Blue, which costs $8 per month if users want a green confirmation mark on their account. Twitter has cut costs by cutting headcount, closing offices and auctioning equipment. Mr. Musk has said that despite Twitter’s severe financial problems, the company is trending towards breaking even. “ Many people were predicting Twitter would be down. They were wrong ,” he said.

Even so, some worry that Mr. Musk is once again too ambitious. In a BBC interview, Tesla and SpaceX executives mentioned plans to pursue artificial intelligence, after a news report said Twitter was collecting powerful computing devices for the purpose of participating in artificial intelligence. join the same field responsible for big AI models like ChatGPT.

Mr. Musk founded a new AI-focused startup – X.AI – in Nevada last month. The state document authorizes 100 million shares and lists Mr. Musk as a director. Meanwhile, according to one of the former employees, Twitter is just a shadow of what it once stood for with no other platform capable of taking its place. “ Nothing can really replace it. Twitter is unique ,” ​​they said.