Billionaire Elon Musk already is proposing significant changes to Twitter and faces significant challenges as he starts his first week as the social-media platform’s owner.
According to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Twitter’s new owner dismissed the company’s board of directors and made oneself the only member of the board.
Musk later stated on Twitter that the new board arrangement is “momentary,” but he did not elaborate.
He’s also experimenting with charging users for verification.
A Musk-affiliated venture capitalist tweeted a survey asking how much users would be prepared to pay for the blue check mark that Twitter has traditionally used to authenticate higher-profile accounts so other users know it’s them.
“Interesting,” replied Musk whose account is verified.
Critics have slammed the mark, which is frequently bestowed upon celebrities, politicians, business leaders, as well as journalists, as a privileged status symbol.
However, Twitter also utilizes the blue check mark to authenticate activists as well as people who find themselves in the news, as well as little-known reporters at small publications across the world, as an additional tool to combat misleading information spread by accounts that impersonate people.
“The entire validation process is currently being revamped,” Musk tweeted on Sunday in reaction to a user who asked for help in becoming verified.
In the meantime, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Company announced on Friday that they had rolled over a total of $1.89 billion in current Twitter stocks, making them the company’s second-largest shareholder after Musk. Some legislators, including Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy, expressed concern about the news.
Murphy tweeted that he is going to request that the Committee on Foreign Investment, which evaluates foreign buyers’ purchases of U.S. businesses, probe the consequences for national security of the kingdom’s investment in Twitter.
“We should be particularly worried that the Saudis, who possess a vested interested in suppressing political speech as well as influencing US politics,” Murphy wrote on Twitter. “An evident issue of national security is at stake, and CFIUS must act.”
Musk, who now owns the social media platform, has welcomed a group of tech friends as well as investors to guide and assist the San Francisco-based company’s transition, which is almost certain to include a staff shakeup. Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal as well as other senior execs last week.
There has been speculation about whether and when he might begin larger-scale layoffs. “I believe there will be a significant number of layoffs,” said Matthew Faulkner, an asst finance professor at San Jose State University. Faulkner mentioned the necessity of cost-cutting after Musk paid a premium for Twitter, as well as the platform’s long-standing struggles to make a profit.
But Musk may also want to get rid of staff who don’t believe in his objective as soon as possible so as to make the remaining ones feel safer.
“You wouldn’t want frantic staff working for you,” Faulkner explained. “That doesn’t inspire people.”
Among those who have disclosed their support for Musk is Sriram Krishnan, an associate at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which promised to contribute to Musk’s plan to acquire the company and take it private in the spring.
In a tweet, Krishnan, a former Twitter product executive, stated that it is “a tremendously important company that can have a significant effect on the world, and Elon is the individual to make that happen.”
Jason Calacanis, the venture capitalist who posted on twitter the poll questioning as to if users could very well pay for verification, stated over the weekend that he is “hanging out at Twitter a tad and merely attempting to figure out what’s going on and help out during the transition.”
According to Calacanis, the team “has a very thorough strategy to decrease the number of as well as visibility of bots, spammers, as well as bad actors on the platform.” In the Twitter poll, he also asked whether users could very well pay between $5 and $15 per month to “be authenticated & get a blue check mark” on Twitter. Twitter is currently free for most users as it is funded by advertising.
Musk offered to acquire Twitter for $44 billion in April, but it wasn’t until Thursday evening that he eventually closed the deal, following a lengthy legal battle with the company. As stated in a court filing, Musk’s lawyers are now requesting the Delaware Chancery Court to dismiss the case.
Musk has made a series of declarations about how to fix Twitter since early this year, and it is unknown which propositions he will emphasize.
He has vowed to relax some of Twitter’s censorship rules in order to foster free speech, but he stated on Friday that no major content actions or the reinstatement of banned accounts would be made until a “content moderation council” with broad viewpoints is established.
He later clarified his statement, tweeting, “anyone suspended for slight & questionable reasons will be released from Twitter jail.”
The leader of a crypto exchange that immersed $500 million in Musk’s acquisition of Twitter said he supported the deal for a variety of reasons, such as the possibility that Musk would transform Twitter into a company that supported cryptocurrency as well as the concept known as Web3, which many cryptocurrency aficionados envision as the next generation of the internet.
“Whenever it comes to free speech, we would like to ensure that crypto has a seat at the table,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Monday. “There are additional tactical things we intend to do, like helping Twitter get into Web3 once they’re prepared.”
He suggested that cryptocurrency could help Musk solve some of his urgent concerns, such as his plan to levy a premium subscription fee for more users.
“That is very easily accomplished globally by using cryptos as a means of payment,” he stated “.
