TWitter will start laying off employeesElon Musk purchased the company in an $44 billion deal on Friday. According to internal communications seen by SME.

On Thursday, employees were informed that they would receive an email with information about their employment status the next day at 9 AM PT. Laid off workers will get a message from their personal email addresses with further instructions, while employees who aren’t being laid off will get messages at their work email addresses.

The layoffs will reportedly affect around 3,700 employees, or roughly half the company’s workforce. Twitter announced that its offices would be closed on Friday, and all badge access will be suspended. This was according to internal communications.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the email said. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

Twitter didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment.

These layoffs end a turbulent first week at Musk’s helm. Shortly after taking power, the billionaire Tesla CEO fired several members of the company’s executive leadership, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.

Musk has also teased several product and policy updates, including charging users $8 per month for a blue-check verification badge, tied to the company’s Twitter Blue subscription offering. Musk is also considering relaunching Vine. This popular video app was shut down by Twitter in 2016.

Musk is under extreme financial pressure to increase Twitter’s financial performance. In its second-quarter earning report in July, the company’s revenue dipped about 1% year over year, and the last year it reported a profit was 2019. The company is also expected to owe $1 billion in annual interest due to at least $13 billion of debt likely used to finance Musk’s acquisition.

GM and Audi are among the big brands that have halted Twitter advertising, as well as major media agencies Interpublic Group, Havas Media, and GM. Musk tweeted on October 27th. published a letter to advertisers promising that the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape.”

He then returned to his home a few days later. posted a Twitter poll asking whether advertisers should support “Freedom of speech” or “Political ‘correctness.’”

FURTHER INFORMATION ON FORBES

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Source:: Social Media Explorer

Author: Aaron