Twitter is not going to die anytime soon
Musk may say that he values excellence, but many of the platform’s smartest people have left because of his impulsive behaviour
Ironically ‘RIPTwitter’ was trending on Twitter the other day. Naturally, everyone who complained about the platform being a hellsite are gushing about the joy it brought to their lives and how much they will miss it. That’s pure Twitter for you. Fortunately, Twitter is not going to die today or tomorrow.
Twitter is now running with a skeleton crew. After half the company was let go two weeks ago, hundreds more left the firm after Elon Musk set a deadline for remaining staff to agree to “extremely hardcore” conditions or take three months severance. Many took the latter.
It’s unclear exactly how many of Twitter’s original 7,500-strong workforce remain. A reporter from Fortune tweeted that 75 per cent of its remaining 3,700 staff had quit, while according to the Verge, about 2,900 staff have stayed behind. The real figure may well be somewhere in the middle. Many staff warned the site would crumble in the near future without enough critical engineers.
Naturally, Musk has dismissed the concerns. “The best people are staying so I’m not super worried,” he tweeted.
Thin-skinned billionaire can’t take criticism
Musk likes to surround himself with loyalists and he has revelled in having a rabid fan base on Twitter, primarily responding to messages of praise. Those who stand up to correct him are shown the door. The thinskinned billionaire has fired several engineers who openly criticised him. Musk may say that he values excellence, but it stands to reason that many of the smartest people at Twitter have now left.
You could argue that running a global online platform with a skeleton crew is absolutely possible. Let’s assume that between 1,000 and 2,000 staff now remain at Twitter. That is still a lot of engineers. Twitter has about 300 million monthly active users. You could also argue that Musk has taken the reins of a company that was bloated and unprofitable in its latest quarter. To radically bring costs down, he needs to cut staff to a nucleus of “hard-core” engineers who can work at high speed and high intensity.
Challenges ahead
But neither of these arguments really hold weight if the goal is long-term success. Musk wants to turn Twitter into the “everything app,” with a host of new features like payments to emulate larger online platforms like China’s WeChat. Musk is planning to relaunch his $8 Twitter Blue service on November 29 “to make sure it’s rock solid.” But Twitter itself might not be so solid.
It’s unclear why Musk’s approach has been so extreme. Twitter has been mostly profitable over the past five years and ran a decent advertising business that, until Musk’s takeover, brought in about 90 per cent of its revenues. That business looks increasingly uncertain as advertisers balk at the turmoil at the company.
Musk is like a mechanic who replaces the engine, timing belt, chassis and entire frame of a car after it has been taken in with a deflated tire. It’s overkill, and almost certain to backfire.