(Reuters) - Twitter has cut half of its workforce and will begin charging $8 for the sought-after blue verification tick, as Elon Musk puts his stamp on the social media platform he bought for $44 billion.
The Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss, who will also serve as chief executive of Twitter, has announced the following actions after he took control a little over a week ago:
Top management Musk fired top executives including CEO Parag
cuts Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, legal affairs and
policy chief Vijaya Gadde
Layoffs Laid off half the workforce on Friday.
The company fired more than 90% of its India
staff, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.
It reported on Sunday that Twitter was asking
dozens of employees who lost their jobs to
return.
$8 for blue Twitter to charge $8/month for
tick Blue, which includes blue tick verification,
verification priority in replies, mentions and search, and
ability to post longer videos and audios.
Advertisers Several corporate advertisers have
hit pause distanced themselves from Twitter, including
General Motors (NYSE:GM), Oreo maker Mondelez (NASDAQ:MDLZ)
International, Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE) and Ford.
Musk tweeted that Twitter has had a
massive drop in revenue from the advertiser
retreat.He had earlier said he wanted the
company to be "the most respected advertising
platform".
Content Musk to set up a content moderation
Moderation council with "widely diverse viewpoints".
Council
Video Feature Twitter was working on a feature that would let
people post videos and charge users to view
them, with the company taking a cut of the
proceeds, the Washington Post reported.
Changes to Musk requested that logged out users visiting
Homepage Twitter's site be redirected to Explore page
which shows trending tweets and news stories,
according to a Verge report.
Vine reboot Musk put up a poll on Twitter asking people if
he should bring back Vine. Of the nearly 5
million people who participated, 70% said
"yes". He has instructed Twitter engineers to
work on a Vine reboot that could be ready by
year-end, Axios reported.
Impersonation Twitter users engaging in impersonation without
to lead to clearly specifying it as a "parody" account
account will be permanently suspended without a
suspension warning, Musk tweeted.
Long-form text Musk said Twitter would soon add the ability to
to tweets attach long-form text to tweets, followed by
monetization for creators for all forms of
content.
Search Musk said Twitter's in-app search would be
improvements improved. "Search within Twitter reminds me of
Infoseek in ‘98! That will also get a lot
better pronto," he tweeted.
Content Musk said Twitter's mission is to become the
Accuracy most accurate source of information about the
world.