Twitter: advertisers and investors put to the test of Elon Musk's methods
Twitter: the methods of Elon Musk, new boss of Twitter, worry advertisers.
REUTERS - DADO RUVIC
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Elon Musk, the new boss of Twitter since last Thursday, announced the layoff of 50% of its 7,500 employees.
The tech troublemaker, boss of Tesla and Space X, has a vision of the platform that worries his employees, but also Twitter users and advertisers.
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Elon Musk is the champion of a certain freedom of expression which would require to relax the rules of moderation of the contents of the platform.
Only, according to Dominique Boullier, specialist in digital uses at Sciences Po joined by
Anne Verdaguer
of the RFI Economy department, he will have to be careful, in particular not to scare away investors and advertisers.
Several groups have already decided to suspend advertising spending on Twitter, including the American agribusiness giant General Mills, the American car manufacturer General Motors and its German competitor Volkswagen.
Elon Musk will have to "
leave people believe that we still have an open space, while regulating it anyway because otherwise, effectively, he will completely discredit the network for advertisers: brands will not agree to invest advertising placements in situations where everyone insults each other or, as Elon Musk did, I remind you, where we allow ourselves to respond to the Twitter leaders of the time with a turd emoji - the emoji poo as they say.
There are no limits on his side... The principle is never to refer to the law or to public control, it is always to (create) spaces completely controlled by the authority of a only man, in this case, Elon Musk.
»
Several NGOs have called on advertisers to put pressure on the new boss of Twitter.
Monetize everything?
Elon Musk justified the layoffs by tweeting that he sadly had "
no choice but to fire when the company is losing over $4 million a day
".
In addition, to finance its acquisition at 44 billion dollars, Elon Musk heavily indebted the company whose financial health was already fragile.
It recorded a significant deficit in the first two quarters of the year.
According to Dominique Boullier, he will test on this network the possibility of monetizing almost everything.
“
So that means that we are completely sweeping away the free model, subsidiarily financed by advertising but without very significant profitability, which was that of Twitter, to move on to something where we will try to monetize everything, including contacts. individual with tweets to celebrities, including retweets, etc.
Everything is possible, you have to expect absolutely everything...
”
Elon Musk announced on Friday the overhaul of several products, including the paid subscription and the account authenticity verification system.
A change in corporate culture that is confirmed.
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To read also
:
Twitter lays off "about 50%" of its employees after its takeover by Elon Musk
(and with AFP)
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