How Musk will put his mark on Twitter: New boss ‘wants to ditch ads in favor of subscriptions that can be bought with Dogecoin’, introduce longer tweets, turn HQ into homeless shelter, ‘fire woke staff’ and kill bots
- Twitter will undergo substantial changes once Elon Musk takes control Throughout April Musk has been tweeting changes he may well implement
- Musk said Twitter would crack down on spam and verify ‘all real humans’
- Has said people who subscribe to Twitter’s premium service Blue should be able to pay with ‘joke’ cryptocurrency Dogecoin
- The Tesla magnate vowed to protect free speech online, ‘defeat the spam bots’ and ‘authenticate all humans’
- He said he would ‘enhance the product with new features’ and ‘make algorithms open source to increase trust’
- New features include introducing an edit button, but also allowing longer tweets
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter will see substantial changes implemented on the social media platform with everything from longer tweets and paid subscriptions using ‘joke’ cryptocurrency Dogecoin all within the realm of possibility.
Musk has vowed to let everyone say whatever they want on Twitter after his takeover of the social media giant.
He is said to favor temporary ‘timeouts’ for users who break the new rules, rather than permanent bans such as those given to Donald Trump.
Details of his immediate plans are slim, but the Tesla chief portrays himself as a free-speech absolutist.
Other mooted changes include blue verification checkmarks for anyone who subscribes to Twitter’s premium Blue service, which costs $2.99 a month.
Musk is said to favor a subscription-based model over advertiser funding, as it would make Twitter less beholden to advertiser pressure. He has even suggested users could pay with cryptocurrency, including joke currency Dogecoin which Musk has long had an affection for.
He’s also likely to fire many of the firm’s woke staff. Workers have been told the transfer of ownership will last around six months, after which Musk is likely to wield the ax.
The firm’s downtown San Francisco could also be turned into a homeless shelter at Musk’s behest, with the California city engulfed by one of the worst homelessness crisis in the United States.
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter will see substantial changes implemented on the social media platform with everything from longer tweets and paid subscriptions using ‘joke’ cryptocurrency Dogecoin all within the realm of possibility
On March 25, Musk tweeted a poll: ‘Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?’
A top priority for Musk is to eliminate ‘bots’ which frequently generate spam and run scams
Musk said that his take over of Twitter would lead to the take down of spam bots and provide all human users with blue check marks to verify their identities
Musk has also teased at other new features including an ‘edit’ button to adjust previously posted tweets and also making the platforms algorithms ‘open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans.’
That would enable people to see exactly why Twitter had chosen to make some tweets more visible to users than others.
A top priority for Musk is to eliminate ‘bots’ which frequently generate spam and run scams.
Earlier this month, he spoke during an interview at a TED conference where he outlined how he might change the company which has more than 200 million users around the globe.
On Monday, Musk reiterated his push to relax Twitter’s policy on the moderating of content.
Twitter takes its content moderation seriously arguing that it is good for business but if Musk follows through it could put the onus on users to combat bullying and misinformation on the platform.
‘Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,’ Musk said in a news release announcing the deal.
Musk has made it clear that he is not keen on the permanent banning of users and prefers timeouts instead.
It is well known that an edit button would be widely welcomed by users.
Musk polled Twitter users to see if they wanted one. It resulted in four million people responding with 70% voting in favor.
Twitter said at the time that it had been working on such a feature since last year.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that tweets would become shorter. On the contrary, Musk has told of his desire for Twitter to allow ‘long-form’ tweets.
In most cases, tweets can contain up to 280 characters which is double the previous limit of 140.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted earlier this month asking his followers whether they would like Twitter to have an edit button
The company clarified that it was already working on adding an edit button before Musk’s poll, pointing to an April 1 tweet announcing their plans
Twitter also shared a mock-up of what an edit button would look like, giving users the ability to change their posts after sharing
Twitter Blue, launched in June 2021, is Twitter’s first subscription service and offers ‘exclusive access to premium features’ on a monthly subscription basis
Musk has spoken of making the algorithm Twitter uses as open source.
It would allow people outside of the company to suggest changes and and even create fixes to Twitter’s code.
Also in April, he suggested that users who paid for Twitter Blue would be able to receive a check mark which shows their account is ‘authenticated’.
Twitter Blue, launched in June 2021, is Twitter’s first subscription service and offers ‘exclusive access to premium features’ on a monthly subscription basis, Twitter says. It is available in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Musk has also suggested Twitter could move towards a subscription-based model and a shift away from advertising which currently generates 90% of its overall revenue.
Twitter Blue allows for extra features for a monthly fee of $2.99.
Throughout April, Musk has been suggesting further changes to Twitter’s business model including tweaks to the platform’s premium Blue service, including a cheaper subscription price, banning ads and offering the option to pay in cryptocurrency
‘Price should probably be ~$2/month, but paid 12 months up front & account doesn’t get checkmark for 60 days (watch for credit card chargebacks) & suspended with no refund if used for scam/spam,’ Musk said in a tweet earlier this month.
Dogecoin is widely seen as a joke cryptocurrency, with one Dogecoin worth $0.158 as of April 26
‘And no ads,’ Musk suggested. ‘The power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly enhanced if Twitter depends on advertising money to survive.’
Musk also proposed an option to pay with dogecoin and asked Twitter users for their views.
The company already lets people tip their favorite content creators using bitcoin. Twitter had said last year that it planned to support authentication for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are digital assets such as images or videos that exist on a blockchain.
On Monday, Dogecoin jumped 26% to $0.1673 after Twitter announced it was accepting Musk’s buyout offer.
Musk has been a longtime fan of the meme-based cryptocurrency with his tweets helping to push the price higher.
On a company level, Musk has floated the idea of closing down the San Francisco headquarters in order to save money and that board members may also not receive a salary, shaving off another $3 million in expenses.
Twitter’s board members may also not receive a salary, shaving off another $3 million in expenses
Earlier in April, Musk took aim at the company’s lax remote working policies, saying he came up with the plan ‘since no one shows up anyway.’
The second tweet about deleting ‘w’ saw Musk give two options without no as an answer, with 55.8 percent saying ‘yes’ and 44.2 percent ‘of course’ of 445,158 votes to-date
Musk also started a poll on his Twitter account earlier in April – which has more than 81 million followers – asking whether the firm’s San Francisco headquarters should be converted to a homeless shelter as ‘no-one shows up (to work there)’.
The poll got more 300,000 votes in an hour, with 90% answering yes.
It comes weeks after Twitter brass – who offered staffers the option of working from home ‘forever’ during the pandemic – reopened its offices March 15, with remote work remaining an option for staffers.
‘It’s been almost two years since we closed our offices and travel and I’m excited to announce that we’re ready to fully open up business travel and all our offices around the world!’ Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal wrote in a note to employees posted to Twitter March 3.
‘Business travel is back effective immediately, and office openings will start on March 15,’ the exec wrote.
In the statement, Agrawal, who was promoted to CEO of the San Francisco-based company in November, said that he would be honoring a policy put in place by former head exec Jack Dorsey during the early days of the pandemic, that said staffers could work remotely ‘forever’ if they wanted to.
‘Our top priority since the beginning of the pandemic has been to keep you all safe and this will continue,’ Agrawal wrote.
Staffers at the San Francisco-headquarter company now have the option to come into the office – a policy Musk seemingly took issue with in a poll earlier this month. Pictured is Twitter’s San Francisco office last summer
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