Most Read by Bloomberg The social media company laid off nearly 3,700 people on Friday, soon to contact dozens of employees it decided were either accidentally fired or too important to the changes the billionaire entrepreneur wants to make. Another of Musk’s key early goals — adding verification checks for members of the monthly subscription service — has been delayed until Wednesday to avoid potential chaos during the US midterm elections. The events of the whiplash, as described by people familiar with the situation or in an internal company memo posted on Slack, follow Musk’s own acknowledgment in a tweet that the company he and good partners bought for $44 billion is losing 4 million dollars a day. Twitter has been laying off its workforce as a way to cut costs following the Musk buyout, which closed in late October. Many employees learned they lost their jobs after their access to company systems such as email and Slack was suddenly suspended. The requests for workers’ return demonstrate how rushed and chaotic the process was. A Twitter spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Twitter’s plan to rehire workers was previously reported by Platformer. “As far as reducing the power of Twitter, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk tweeted on Friday. Some areas were hit harder than others. The company laid off more than 90% of its staff in India over the weekend, severely draining its engineering and product staff, people familiar with the matter said. The cuts left the company with about a dozen staff in the growing market, they said. The story continues Read more: Twitter lays off more than 90% of India staff, leaving just a dozen Meta Platforms Inc., which is also struggling to contain costs after heavy investments in its meta-acre project, may announce significant job cuts this week, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the plans. Layoffs at the Facebook owner, which are expected to affect thousands of workers, could begin as early as Wednesday, the newspaper said. Twitter has nearly 3,700 employees remaining, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk is pushing those who remain at the company to move quickly on the new shipping capabilities, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to meet new deadlines. Twitter has announced that it is introducing new features to its Twitter Blue subscription plan, offering a verification check mark for every user who pays the monthly fee. The company also said it will soon roll out other features, including half ads, the ability to post longer videos, and priority ranking in replies, reports, and searches. Twitter will issue the new blue verification checkmarks to users who pay $7.99 a month for the service starting Nov. 9, according to an internal company message posted on Slack. The company had previously planned to launch the subscription feature on November 7, a day before the election. “Broad verification will democratize journalism and empower the voice of the people,” Musk said in a tweet. The company received internal and external feedback that the verification process for the Twitter Blue program could be ripe for abuse, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified. This raised concerns that candidates and other political figures might impersonate the site in the days leading up to the US election. Late Sunday, Musk said Twitter would ban accounts impersonating others after several high-profile users changed their names and photos to match the billionaire. Any name change will cause a temporary loss of a verified checkmark. –With the help of Sankalp Phartyal. (Musk tweet updates on verification in paragraph 13) Most Read by Bloomberg Businessweek ©2022 Bloomberg LP
