Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, personally bought Twitter last week. What he’s set to do is nothing short of a Revolution, and not necessarily a good one.
Things are shaking up in the social media world. Last week, the richest man in the world Elon Musk announced his own, personal acquisition of Twitter. Meanwhile, scary news are coming from the house of Facebook: its parent company, Meta, has lost over 70% in value in just one year. A loss comparable to the GDP of a small country.
New players are gaining ground. Popular social networks from China, like TikTok, are stealing millions of active users from the “old guard”. TikTok and WeChat (China’s version of WhatsApp), each have over a billion monthly active users. In comparison, Twitter “only” has 436 millions.
And now Twitter will not be a public company anymore. With Musk’s personal acquisition, its shares will be withdrawn from the market. It is not yet exactly clear what Elon Musk’s vision for the future of Twitter is, but it will certainly be nothing short of a Revolution.
And the Revolution already started, with reports claiming that Musk is ready to lay off half of Twitter’s employees next friday. They amount to 3700 Twitter’s workers, which should receive two months of pay according to these reports.
As soon as Musk bought Twitter, he immediately started a purge. Despite denying claims that he will lay off 75% of the staff (apparently, he meant to stop at 50%...), he fired every single executive. They include Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s former CEO, whose spot was taken by Elon Musk himself.
But Musk’s Stalinian purge is not the only aspect of his Revolution. It is only the beginning. He is set to completely change Twitter’s business model, starting from the company’s revenue stream.
How will Twitter change with Elon Musk
Despite saying many times that he wanted to keep advertising as Twitter’s main revenue stream, Musk needs a quick influx of cash to justify his enormous purchase. The first step to do so is to charge verified accounts 8 dollars a month to keep their blue badge.
The blue badge was introduced by Twitter to distinguish from the real celebrities’ accounts to the fake ones. It was an otherwise completely free option, the only requirement for which was to be a famous individual.
Initially, Elon Musk planned to charge 20 dollars a month for the badge, but the immediate backlash had him reduce it to 8 dollars. This, however, was still not enough to appeal to celebrities, who were also disgusted by the rise of fascist and racist comments on the platform. Twitter celebrities blamed Elon Musk’s talks of “free speech” for such an insurgence, and many decided to abandon the social media altogether.
For example, here’s what singer Tony Braxton had to say about the new flow of racist comments:
I'm shocked and appalled at some of the "free speech" I've seen on this platform since its acquisition. Hate speech under the veil of "free speech" is unacceptable; therefore I am choosing to stay off Twitter as it is no longer a safe space for myself, my sons and other POC.
— Toni Braxton (@tonibraxton) October 29, 2022
However, the exodus of celebrities to other platforms will hardly be a blow to Elon Musk. His goal is to make Twitter an advertising safe haven, no matter the cost in subscribers. Elon Musk knows he cannot win the battle against TikTok, so his Revolution will favor advertising, hardly being a popular one.
