Elon Musk wants a new twitter agenda. Possible layoffs

The planned takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk is an extremely hot topic, which is why information about planned changes on the social platform is constantly appearing. On an ongoing basis (of course on Twitter), the billionaire himself feeds them. However, he is not very keen on the questionable business sense of the transaction.

Elon Musk wants to cut costs. Twitter may be layoffs

Elon Musk admitted publicly (in mid-April) that he does not buy Twitter for money, but wants the social network to be “a mainstay of freedom of speech on the Internet”. It is hard to believe, however, that Musk does not think about the possible losses or profits of the website at all. Especially since – as we wrote on Gazeta.pl this week – generating profits is not Twitter’s strong point, and after a possible takeover by Musk, it can be even worse.

It turns out, however, that the head of Tesla has his ideas for reviving the new business. As reported independently and citing anonymous informants, the billionaire introduced some of them during talks with representatives of banks that are to help finance the transaction.

Apparently, one of Musk’s strategies assumes optimization of service costs, including staff cuts, i.e. layoffs. However, the billionaire now does not have access to non-public data on the platform’s earnings, but misjudges the company’s current financial performance. He also said – according to the informants – that he knows how to make money on his businesses, and he gave Tesla and SpaceX as translations.

As he notes, Musk’s cuts may primarily affect the PR department, which the billionaire may find unnecessary. In the past, he deleted a similar department at Tesla, and he himself took over some of the tasks of the company’s marketers and PR specialists.

In conversations with bankers, there were also ideas of paying influencers to attract new users to Twitter, similar to the business model that helped TikTok grow at an extraordinary pace. He also mentioned new subscription options that would allow paid but ad-free access to Twitter. It’s worth recalling that Musk has in the past criticized the social media business model of earning money from advertising.

Musk is looking for money to buy Twitter

Currently, the South African-born billionaire is busy looking for sources of financing for a huge, $ 44 billion transaction. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world with a fortune estimated at well over $ 200 billion, but even he cannot spend $ 44 billion just like that. There is simply no such amount in a bank account or in a home safe.

Musk has almost all his assets in shares (mainly Tesla), but he can only sell a limited number of them (reducing his stake by around 44 billion would ruin the company’s valuation on the stock exchange). In the last two days, however, he sold 4.4 million shares worth around $ 4 billion. In addition, Musk wants to obtain $ 13 billion from bank loans (including from the Morgan Stanley bank) and another $ 12.5 billion from a loan for a set of Tesla shares.