Elon Musk wastes no time changing Twitter
Less than 24 hours after completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk decided to change its homepage.
Logged Out Users
He requested that logged out users visiting Twitter.com be redirected to the Explore page that shows trending tweets and news stories, according to employees familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to speak without the company’s permission. Before, visiting Twitter’s homepage while logged out showed only a sign-up form, encouraging the creation of an account to view tweets. Musk’s directive, which was implemented late Friday, required VP involvement to override a code freeze put in place to prevent rogue staffers from making changes during the takeover process.
No More Sacred Cows
Though Musk didn’t widely articulate a reason for the change, to the employees who observed it, the message was clear: no more sacred cows. Inside the old Twitter, such a decision would have been fought over between teams for weeks. But this was the new Twitter. As a former executive told me: “That’s definitely one way to make it clear you’re in charge now.”
Subscriptions
Changing Twitter’s homepage is an example of how Musk, less than three days into his reign as “Chief Twit,” has started to swiftly change the company from the inside out. Even as he is preparing to lay off a significant portion of employees in the coming days, he has fast-tracked changes to Twitter itself, such as ordering that its paid subscription feature, Super Follows, be renamed to “Subscriptions” in a rushed update to Twitter’s mobile app. He has also discussed using Starlink, his satellite-based internet service at SpaceX, to make Twitter available in countries where it is currently hard to access.
Employees tasked with completing tasks from Musk have worked late into the night and the weekend while their managers draw up lists of team members to lay off. When Musk fired ex-CEO Parag Agrawal and other top execs last week, he did so “for cause” in an attempt to avoid paying out the tens of millions in stock they would otherwise receive, said a person familiar with the situation. (The Information first reported that Musk fired the Twitter execs for cause.)
Now employees are fearing that layoffs will begin before November 1st, when a significant percentage of them are set to receive stock grants paid out in cash at $54.20 a share. Shortly after this story was published, Musk tweeted “This is false” in response to a tweet featuring another story claiming that the layoffs would happen before that date.
About E. J. McKay
E.J.McKay is a Shanghai-headquartered investment bank with a special focus on mergers & acquisitions. We are one of the most long standing independent investment banks in China, with core business of mergers & acquisitions and financing advisory.