Elon Musk confirms he will be new Twitter CEO as his team finalizes 25% job cut plan

billionaire Elon Musk A filing on Monday said he would become chief executive officer. twitterthe social media company he recently acquired for $44 billion.

Musk previously changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit” in a sign alluding to the move.

It also comes after the running mask Tesla When space xTwitter CEO Parag Agrawal and other company executives were fired last week, making himself the sole member of the board, according to the company, which filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

The following individuals who were Twitter directors prior to the effective date of the merger are no longer Twitter directors: Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi. Alemayehou,” Musk said in a file.

Shortly afterward, Musk tweeted that the move to dissolve the board was “only temporary,” without elaborating.

Musk reportedly consulted with Twitter’s remaining senior executives over the weekend to discuss the site’s future and plans to lay off 25% of its workforce. Washington Post.

Alex Spiro, a high-profile attorney who represented Musk for several years, is believed to have led conversations with various teams at the company, including legal, government relations, policy and marketing.

A company directory obtained by The Washington Post also lists Musk’s longtime colleagues David Sachs and Jason Karakanis with company emails and the title of “staff software engineer.”

The team is currently deciding which divisions will be targeted for the first round of layoffs, which will lay off about a quarter of Twitter’s 7,000 staff.

Virtually no department is left without an eye on sales, product, engineering, legal, trust and safety. Some of the highest paid employees are in sales, while others make $300,000 a year.

Management is said to be asking questions about all aspects of the business, including content moderation, spam, and the risk of the upcoming election.

Identity checks are also high on the agenda, including confirming high-profile users with blue checkmarks.

Since then, Musk has moved swiftly to make changes to a company he had ridiculed for months for being slow to introduce product changes and remove spam accounts.

Musk’s team studied Twitter’s software code and met with some employees to understand how various aspects of the platform work, according to two sources familiar with the matter. We started the meeting.

Some staff have received little contact from Musk or other leaders and use news reports to summarize what is happening at the company.

Musk has already made big changes to its social media platform, Test the waters for asking the user to pay for verification.

A venture capitalist working with Musk tweeted a poll asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue checkmark that Twitter has historically used to identify high-profile accounts.

“Interesting,” said Musk, whose account was verified.

Critics deride the mark, which is often given to celebrities, politicians, business leaders, and journalists, as an elite status symbol.

But Twitter uses blue check marks to check for activists and people who suddenly appear in the news, as well as lesser-known journalists from small publications around the world, to discredit misinformation from accounts impersonating people. I use it as an additional tool to suppress.

“We are currently reviewing the entire verification process,” Musk tweeted on Sunday in response to a user asking for help getting verified.

After taking ownership of the social media service, Musk invited a group of tech friends and investors to help lead the transformation of the San Francisco-based company.

There was uncertainty as to whether and when he could initiate major layoffs.

“I think there will be a lot of job cuts,” said Matthew Faulkner, an assistant professor at San Jose State University. Faulkner noted the need to cut costs after Musk bought Twitter at a premium. , Musk may want to get rid of employees who don’t believe in his mission as quickly as possible so that those who remain feel more at ease.

“You don’t want a desperately scared employee working for you,” Faulkner said. “It doesn’t motivate people.”

Sriram Krishnan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, was among those who disclosed their support for Mr. Musk.

Krishnan, a former product executive at Twitter, tweeted, “It’s a very important company, and it can have a big impact on the world, and Elon is the one to make it happen.”

Venture capitalist Jason Karakanis, who tweeted a poll on whether users would pay for verification, said over the weekend that he was “hanging out on Twitter a bit and trying to be as helpful as possible during the transition.”

Karakanis said the team already “has a very comprehensive plan to reduce the number (and visibility) of bots, spammers and bad actors on the platform.” A Twitter poll also asked whether a user would pay $5 to $15 a month to “get verified and put a blue check mark” on his Twitter. Since Twitter currently relies on advertising for its revenue, it’s free for most users.

Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April, but after an attempt to back off and a lengthy legal battle with the company, Musk finally closed the deal last Thursday night.

Musk’s attorneys are now asking Delaware’s Chancery Court to drop the case, according to court filings released Monday. The two sides were set to go to trial in November if they did not reach a deal by the end of last week.

Musk has made a number of statements about how to fix Twitter since earlier this year, and it’s still unclear which suggestions he’ll prioritize.

He promised to cut some of Twitter’s content restrictions to promote free speech, but until Friday a “content moderation council” with diverse perspectives was set up to prevent content and banned content from being banned. He later justified his remarks, stating, “Anyone suspended for minor and dubious reasons will be released from Twitter prison.”

The head of the cryptocurrency exchange that invested $500 million in Musk’s acquisition of Twitter said his reasons for supporting the deal include the possibility that Musk could move Twitter into a company that supports cryptocurrencies and a concept known as Web3. He said there are some. Enthusiasts envision it as the next generation of the Internet.

“When it comes to free speech, we want crypto to come to the table,” Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng told CNBC on Monday. “And then there are more tactical things, like when he’s ready, he wants to help bring Twitter into Web3.”

Cryptocurrencies could help solve some of Musk’s most pressing challenges, including plans to charge premium membership fees to more users, he said.

“This can be done very easily globally by using cryptocurrencies as a means of payment,” he said.