Elon Musk carried out massive layoffs at Twitter, the social media platform he owns now and is adamant about the changes to be made in the processing for the elusive blue tick.
The 51-year-old billionaire defended his firing spree saying he was left with no choice. After handing out pink slips to the employees through an email, the world’s richest person shared a tweet that like his other posts has gone viral.
“Power to the People”, tweeted Musk which has garnered over 14,000 retweets and more than one lakh likes.
Later, Musk tweeted defending the $8 fee for verification, saying “Trash me all day, but it’ll cost $8”.The Twitter boss has been devising new ways for Twitter to make money after his buyout, the most talked about being the $8 fee for verification.
ALSO READ: From scrapping ‘days of rest’ to Vine revival, 5 things Elon Musk is doing at Twitter
There were reports that the social media giant would charge $20 per month for a blue verification badge (blue tick).
After defending the verification fee by saying the company needed to pay bills, Musk announced the users will be charged $8 a month for the blue tick verification.
On Friday, the social media giant sacked half of its 7,500-strong staff in Musk’s major overhaul of the company. According an AFP report, the employees laid off were denied access to company computers and email on an immediate basis.
“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk tweeted Friday evening.
The job cuts is another move by Musk to devise ways to pay for the $44 billion deal in which he took billions of dollars in debt and sold Tesla shares worth $15.5 billion.
According to report, Musk owes $1 billion in annual interest alone to pay for the deal he had tried to back out days after he had made the offer.
The moves would help overcome the potential loss of advertisers, Twitter’s main source of revenue, with many of the world’s top brands putting their ad buys on hold, spooked by Musk’s well-known disdain for content controls.
Blue tick anyone?
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