Billionaire Elon Musk is already proposing major changes for Twitter and faces major obstacles as he begins his first week as owner of the social media platform.
Twitter’s new owner fired the company’s board of directors and became the sole board member, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Musk later said on Twitter that the new board setup is “temporary,” but did not provide any details.
It’s also testing the waters by asking users to pay for verification. A venture capitalist who works with Musk tweeted a survey asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue verification mark Twitter has historically used to verify high-profile accounts so other users know they’re really them.
Musk, whose account is verified, replied: “Interesting.”
Critics have derided the brand, often bestowed on celebrities, politicians, business leaders and journalists, as a symbol of elite status.
But Twitter also uses the blue verification mark to verify activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists from small publications around the world, as an additional tool to curb misinformation from accounts that impersonate people.
“The entire verification process is being renewed right now,” Musk tweeted on Sunday in response to a user who asked for help getting verified.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said he and his Kingdom Holding Company amassed $1.89 billion in existing Twitter stock, making them the company’s largest shareholder after Musk. The news raised concerns among some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat.
Murphy tweeted that he is asking the Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews acquisitions of American businesses by foreign buyers, to investigate the national security implications of the kingdom’s investment on Twitter.
“We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in suppressing political speech and affecting US policy, are now the second largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy tweeted. “There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should conduct a review.”
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After taking ownership of the social networking service, Musk has invited a group of friends and investors from the tech world to help guide the San Francisco-based company’s transformation, which will likely include a shake-up of its staff . Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives last week.
There has been uncertainty about whether and when layoffs could begin on a larger scale.
“I think there will be a lot of layoffs,” said Matthew Faulkner, assistant professor of finance at San Jose State University. Faulkner pointed to the need to cut costs after Musk bought Twitter at a premium and the platform’s long-running struggles to turn a profit. But Musk might also want to get rid of employees who don’t believe in his mission as quickly as possible so that those who remain will feel more secure.
“You don’t want to have frantically scared employees working for you,” Faulkner said. “That doesn’t motivate people.”
Among those who have revealed they are helping Musk is Sriram Krishnan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, who pledged in the spring to participate in Musk’s plan to buy the company and take it private.
Krishnan, who is also a former Twitter product executive, said in a tweet that it is “a very important company that can have a huge impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen.”
Jason Calacanis, the venture capitalist who tweeted the poll about whether users would pay for verification, said over the weekend that he’s “on Twitter a little bit and just trying to be as helpful as possible during the transition.”
Calacanis said the team already “has a very comprehensive plan to reduce the number (and visibility) of bots, spammers and bad actors on the platform.” And in Twitter’s survey, it asked whether users would pay $5 to $15 a month to “get verified and get a blue verification mark” on Twitter. Twitter is currently free for most users because it relies on advertising for its revenue.
Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April, but it wasn’t until Thursday evening that he finally closed the deal, after his attempts to back out led to a lengthy legal battle with the company Musk’s lawyers are now asking the Delaware Court of Chancery to throw out the case, according to a court filing made public Monday. The two sides were due to go to trial in November if they didn’t close the deal by the end of last week.
Musk has made a series of pronouncements since the beginning of the year about how to fix Twitter, and it’s not yet clear which proposals he will prioritize.
He has promised to loosen some of Twitter’s content restrictions to promote free speech, but said Friday that no major decisions about content or the reinstatement of banned accounts will be made until a “content moderation board” is created ” with different points of view. He later qualified that comment, tweeting “anyone suspended for minor, dubious reasons will be released from Twitter jail.”
The head of a cryptocurrency exchange that invested $500 million in Musk’s acquisition of Twitter said he had a number of reasons to support the deal, including the possibility of Musk transitioning from Twitter to a company that supports cryptocurrency and the concept known as Web3, which many cryptocurrency enthusiasts anticipate. as the next generation of the Internet.
“We want to make sure crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Monday. “And there are more tactical things, like we want to help bring Twitter to Web3 when they’re ready.”
He said the cryptocurrency could be useful in solving some of Musk’s immediate challenges, such as the plan to charge a premium membership fee for more users.
“This can be done very easily, globally, using cryptocurrency as a means of payment,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Randall Chase contributed to this story.
Matt O’brien and Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press