Read about the Elon Musk Twitter employees meeting or the twelve highlights of Elon Musk's first meeting with Twitter employees.
Elon Musk has spoken to Twitter workers for the first time since his agreement to buy the company, as part of a meeting in which he discussed topics ranging from layoffs to aliens, through who will be CEO and what will change when he takes control of the company.
Musk began the conversation, moderated by Twitter's head of Marketing and Human Resources, Leslie Berland, by reiterating how much he loves the social network and that he "wants to buy" the company. The source has been able to review a recording of this meeting.
Not much more was said about the process of how he is going to buy the company. The questions focused on his plans for the platform, product and business changes and his vision of freedom of expression. Musk spoke a lot in this meeting, which lasted more than an hour, about topics that were asked and others that were not.
Elon Musk Twitter employees meeting
Musk spoke plainly when asked by Twitter employees about the possibility of layoffs at the company, noting that revenue is currently less than it spends each year.
"It's not a good situation to be in," Musk said. "Therefore, there must be some kind of rationalization of staff and expenses so that revenues are greater than expenses, or else Twitter simply will not be viable or will not be able to grow," he added.
The businessperson explained that the layoffs would not affect those who mean "an important contribution" for the company. These people "shouldn't have anything to worry about," he said.
There has been a lot of speculation, due to Musk's criticism of Twitter's leadership, its operations, and its user figures, that the billionaire no longer wants to buy the company. Musk was clear at the meeting about how much the "loves" Twitter and outlined his plans to operate his business once the social network acquires it this year.
"Some people use their hands to express themselves. I use Twitter," Musk said.
Elon Musk Twitter employees meeting revealed
The entrepreneur wants advertising to remain on the platform and be "as entertaining as possible." But he only wants "good products" to be advertised, not "scams" like those advertised on YouTube, he claims. He claimed that he was recently defrauded by a defective product that he bought through an advertisement in a video.
Musk, who co-founded PayPal, also suggested the integration of payment systems on Twitter, so that people can send and receive money and cryptocurrencies, as well as make purchases from the platform.
"This increases the utility," according to Musk. "I think news, entertainment and payments are the 3 most critical areas," he added.
Twitter should be "so irresistible that they can't live without it," he has come to assure.
The American businessperson said he was "not worried about titles" when asked if he would become CEO of Twitter, replacing the current one, Parag Agrawal. He later pointed out that he changed his position from CEO to 'Tech King' at Tesla and from finance chief to 'coin master' because he thinks "it's cooler."
Regardless of the position, Musk does want to "drive the product in a particular direction" and intends to lead improvements in the platform's software, the product, and its design.
Elon Musk Twitter employees meeting statement
"I don't mind doing other things related to the company's operations, but there are some obligations," according to the millionaire. "I really just want to make sure that the product evolves quickly and in an effective way. I am not worried about the position but, obviously, people will have to listen to me," he added.
Asked about which parts of Twitter he wants to get to know better, Musk referred to "bots" or automated spam accounts, something that has become his main problem since he agreed to buy the company.
Now it is going to receive a huge amount of data about the active users of Twitter, which the current leaders of the social network fear it will use to carry out criticisms about its prevalence above the official data with which to renegotiate its offer of 41,000 million euros, as the source has previously reported.
Musk admitted during the meeting that he has "less knowledge" about Twitter bots, but that the possibility that they could affect the platform's monetizable user data is "probably the biggest concern" he has.
"This is what actually drives ad and subscription revenue and I really think payments will be an interesting thing to do. All this is only relevant because of the number of humans present in the system," he said.
Asked about his opinion on freedom of expression on the platform and what he will do against the prevalence of abusive, illegal, or extremist content, Musk reiterated his plans for Twitter to operate "within the limits of the law." He also acknowledged that for the number of users of the social network to increase, this content cannot be shown to them.
"It's important to make Twitter as attractive as possible. This implies not showing people content that they might find offensive or even boring. Or even, bored. TikTok does an excellent job of making sure you do not get bored.
Musk has tried TikTok for the first time recently and this has been his verdict: "It feels a bit like attention deficit disorder but it's one level beyond."
Currently, Twitter has 230 million active daily users, or people who open the app at least once a day, according to the platform's current data. But Musk thinks there should be many more.
Elon Musk Twitter employees meeting comments
"Right now, it's a small business model. There are 8,000 million people in the world, which implies that almost 7,800 million are not doing anything " on the social network.
"There is the potential for Twitter to be accessible to a larger magnitude of people and for many more people to find it useful," he added.
Musk later commented that he wants "at least 1 billion people, maybe more" to use the platform. At another point in the meeting, he suggested that 50% of the world's population "might find Twitter useful."
Musk said he intends to implement a stock-based compensation plan like the one currently underway at SpaceX, which is also an unlisted company.
Twitter workers typically receive a substantial portion of their total compensation in the form of restricted stock units, which are awarded quarterly over a 4-year period. Not being in the Stock market, this will stop happening.
Every 6 months, there is a "liquidity event" at SpaceX where employees can sell their private shares of the company to outside buyers at a fixed price. "It has worked very well for the entire life of the company," Musk said.
Elon Musk Twitter employees meeting questions
"Something like that would make sense on Twitter," he added.
Musk also answered this question: "Twitter has a lot of amazing, smart and talented people. What can we do to earn your trust and what will you do to earn ours?". In his response, he talked about taking Twitter "to the next level" and seemed to allude to who should not be working at the company.
"If someone is doing useful things, that's great. But if they are not doing useful things, why are they in the company? We need to improve the technology, improve the design and confidence comes from that," he said.
He also said he "loves" that the people who work for him "get things done." He also made it clear that he does not like it when the opposite is the case.
Berland mentioned that about 1,500 Twitter employees currently work remotely full-time, and all the remaining 6,000 employees work in a hybrid model with some days in the office and some days remote.
This comes after Musk recently announced that all Tesla employees will be required to spend at least 40 hours a week working in person.
During the meeting, he admitted that making cars is different from the kind of work that is done on Twitter, but that even at Tesla, some software engineers and the like are still able to do some remote work. Although he still prefers people to work in person.
"We have to try to get things done in person. But if someone is exceptional at their job, then it is possible that they will be efficient even working remotely," he said.
Billionaire Elon Musk Twitter employees meeting: The billionaire said that at Tesla he asked managers for a list of workers, detailing which employees were considered an "excellent collaborator" and based on this, a decision was made about remote work.
Even in these extraordinary cases, he believes that people must physically come to work sometimes to "recognize their colleagues."
"If you're walking down the street and you come across your co-workers and you don't recognize them, that wouldn't be good," he said.
At the time, Slack messages between Twitter employees skyrocketed in the face of confusion over these comments, according to one of the meeting attendees. "The trend has to be more towards in-person work. It is simply better," Musk concluded.
The businessperson again referred to YouTube, about which he has been tweeting in recent weeks. He compared it to Twitter in terms of how creators can make money on YouTube, but "not on Twitter," even if they use the platform to interact with their audience.
"Creators use Twitter to drive traffic to their YouTube videos, because that's how they make a living and that really should be in one place," he has defended.
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