Elon Musk Twitter Takeover HIGHLIGHTS: Misunderstanding With Apple On 'Twitter's Removal From App Store' Cleared: Musk
Elon Musk takes over Twitter: Highlights from Musk's hostile Twitter takeover.
New Twitter boss and tech billionaire Elon Musk met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and tweeted that a misunderstanding regarding Twitter being removed from Apple App Store has been cleared. This comes within a week of Musk claiming that Apple has stopped most of its advertising on the micro-blogging platform and accused the company of threatening to withdraw the platform from its App Store.
Elon Musk has tweeted saying that the poll he started on getting former US President Donald Trump back on Twitter is getting1M votes each hour.
Elon Musk has made two Promises on the World Cup coverage.
The newly appointed CEO of FTX, John Ray III, came down heavily on its former CEO and founder Bankman-Fried for the complete failure of the company. In a court filing, he called the FTX turmoil "a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here." He was appointed as the new CEO of FTX after the company filed for bankruptcy in a US court. Ray has been a veteran insolvency professional with Enron. He has over 40 years of experience in the corporate world.
El Salvador will begin buying one Bitcoin a day from today (November 18), as per Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. The announcement comes at a time when the crypto world is already facing unprecedented challenges after the failure of crypto exchange FTX and its consequent bankruptcy filing in the US court. After becoming the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as an official and legal tender in September 2021, El Salvador has already purchased about 2,381 Bitcoins for its treasury.
Twitter fell into pitless chaos under its new owner Elon Musk after several employees appeared to have quit following a deadline by the billionaire entrepreneur and the company sent messages it was closing its “office buildings” for the next few days. The New York Times (NYT) said in a report that after a 5 pm Thursday deadline was given by Musk to employees to choose whether to quit or stay on at Twitter, “hundreds of Twitter employees appeared to have decided to depart with three months of severance pay.” Twitter also announced through email that it would close “our office buildings” and disable employee badge access until Monday.
Twitter is not the same anymore. Since new chief Elon Musk introduced a monetised blue tick verification experience, the platform is chock-a-block with ‘verified’ accounts that are posting random facts about employee layoffs at the company. Of course, they are parody accounts, but until and unless that’s specified in a profile name, it’s very hard to separate facts from jokes. Additionally, Musk’s new ‘hardcore’ employee policies have apparently led to an exodus of employees from the platform. All this has led to #RIPTwitter to start trending, and incredulously, Musk maintains that he’s “not super worried”.
A former disabled employee at Twitter Dmitry Borodaenko filed a lawsuit against the company on Wednesday claiming that Elon Musk’s latest advisory for the employees which asked them to be ready for “long hours of high-intensity work” or take a three-month severance pay, discriminates against workers with disabilities. California-based engineering manager Borodaenko claimed that Twitter fired him after he refused to report to the office. Borodaenko filed a class-action suit against Twitter in San Francisco federal court. He said that his disability makes him vulnerable to the Covid-19 virus.
Twitter has been reportedly hit with a new wave of mass resignations after Elon Musk enforced Tesla's way of work style giving an ultimatum to employees that they have to perform "extremely hardcore" work or leave the micro-blogging platform.
Bringing his Tesla way of work style to Twitter, Elon Musk has given employees ultimatum till Thursday that they have to perform "extremely hardcore" work or leave the micro-blogging platform. According to a copy of an email sent by Musk and first reported by CNN, the new Twitter CEO said any employee who did not commit to the ultimatum by Thursday evening will receive three months' severance. "Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore," Musk wrote in the memo.
Elon Musk on Thursday announced that users would finally be able to post longer tweets. Currently, users are only able to post tweets with a maximum character limit of 280. Twitter is yet to confirm when the new feature will roll out and what the new updated character count will be.
Elon Musk has said that he does not want to be the CEO of any company, be it Tesla or Twitter. Musk made the comment during a testimony at a trial in the US on Wednesday, challenging his controversial pay compensation package at Tesla. "I frankly don't want to be the CEO of any company," he said.
In what seems like Twitter is working towards introducing end-to-end encryption for direct messages (DMs) sent on the micro-blogging site, the new company CEO replied to famed app researcher Jane Manchun Wong with a "wink" when she tweeted that Twitter is bringing back end-to-end encrypted DMs for Twitter on Android.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday took to Twitter and shared a picture of him with two people who seemed like Twitter employees pretending to be fired by him during mass layoffs. "Welcoming back Ligma & Johnson!" he tweeted.
Twitter chief Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that the suspended Twitter blue tick subscription will be relaunched on November 29. Sharing the update on Twitter Musk wrote, "Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid."
Elon Musk on Tuesday said Twitter was "very slow" in India and many other countries. Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October, said Twitter in India was slow "even on latest iPhone". "Twitter is very slow in India, Indonesia and many other countries. This is a fact, not a 'claim'. 10 to 15 secs to refresh homeline tweets is common. Sometimes, it doesn't work at all, especially on Android phones. The only question is how much delay is due to bandwidth/latency/app," Musk tweeted.
Twitter's premium service, which granted a blue verification badge to anyone for $8 a month became unavailable soon after it was launched by the new company boss Elon Musk, following widespread impersonation of celebrities, government officials and organisations. A report by The Verge claims that Musk ignored internal warnings about the paid verification scheme and launched the premium subscription service at $7.99 per month.
Twitter chief Elon Musk came down heavily on his employee on the social media platform after he questioned the claim of his boss’s tweet. Musk had earlier tweeted an apology for Twitter being "super slow" in many countries, saying that the app is doing ">1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render timelines".
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde seeking transfer of his case, challenging the permanent suspension of his Twitter account for allegedly re-tweeting two posts, from the Delhi High Court to the top court. A bench of Justices M R Shah and Hima Kohli also declined to interfere with his second plea against Karnataka High Court dismissing his plea seeking intervention in the petition filed by Twitter Inc challenging a series of blocking orders issued by the Centre.
US Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Sunday threatened Twitter chief Elon Musk to "fix" his companies "or Congress will," hours after Musk mocked the senator for demanding answers about Twitter's verification process. Markey has requested for answers about the platform’s new verification and impersonation policies.
Among a series of changes that Twitter is witnessing comes another change that says the micro-blogging site will be doing away with the feature that adds what device a tweet was written on, billionaire and new company chief Elon announced on Monday.
Tesla Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Elon Musk says he’s overworked. According to news agency Bloomberg, Musk on Monday said, “I have too much work on my plate, that’s for sure.” Musk, who was responding to questions during a session at the B20 in Indonesia, a business conference running alongside the G20 meeting in Bali this week, said, “I’m working the absolute most that I can work -- morning to night, seven days a week.”
After firing about 50 percent of Twitter's workforce, or about 3,800 employees, Elon Musk has reportedly laid off at least 4,400 contractual workers at the company.
Twitter's new chief Elon Musk on Sunday apologised for the platform being super slow in several countries. The apology came minutes after he tweeted, "Twitter feels increasingly alive." He also announced an upcoming feature that will allow organisations to identify which Twitter accounts are associated with them.
Twitter is the 'biggest click driver on the Internet by far', wrote Elon Musk in response to a tweet.
Elon Musk, the billionaire new owner of Twitter, will not go to Indonesia for a business gathering on the sidelines of the G20 summit, but will instead attend virtually, a senior Indonesian official said Sunday, as reported by news agency AFP.
Musk was due to speak at the so-called B20 business conference on the resort island of Bali but a court case over his 2018 pay package worth about $56 billion in stock options is slated to begin next week, the report mentioned.
Twitter Blue will probably "come back end of next week", billionaire owner Elon Musk said in a tweet on Saturday. Twitter on Friday paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service as fake accounts mushroomed.
Elon Musk has posted a new poll asking whether Twitter is more fun or less now.
Twitter’s relaunched premium service, which grants blue check “verification” labels to anyone for $8/month was unavailable on Friday as the microblogging site was flooded with imposter accounts it itself had approved, as reported by the news agency AP.
The latest move caps a chaotic start for the new subscription service, one of the changes made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk after taking over the company two weeks ago. Before Musk’s takeover, a “blue check” was granted to celebrities and Journalists verified by the platform. The “blue check” is given with the aim of preventing impersonation. Now the service can be availed by anyone for $8 a month.
Several Twitter users on Friday reported that they could not access Twitter's new option to sign up for the $8 subscription service. The new Twitter Blue subscription service has been taken down the platform's iOS app after chaos and mayhem, The Verge reported.
Elon Musk is coming down hard on Twitter’s employees amidst reports of mass layoffs across the world. The billionaire entrepreneur recently took over the microblogging platform with a $44-billion deal and proposed an array of changes to the company’s policies, including a reduction of the workforce to cut down costs. As a result, Twitter laid off nearly half of its employees across the globe. Now, in his first email to employees, Musk has reportedly laid out a set of stern rules that include 80-hour work weeks, and immediate layoffs if new rules aren’t adhered to.
Elon Musk tweeted that usage of Twitter "continues to rise". The new CEO also added that active users hit an "all-time high" on November 11.
After Twitter launched a subscription service allowing users to buy blue check mark for $8, 'verified' fake profiles seem to flood the platform. Earlier, notable personalities from different categories were the only ones who were given the coveted verified check mark. This was done after verifying their background and checking their official ID allocated by the government among others. The drawbacks of the new subscription policy have started to surface as Jesus Christ has now got the opportunity to have a verified Twitter account.
Koo — the made-in-India rival of Twitter — will not charge users for a verification badge, its co-founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna said as he took on the larger rival for allegedly first creating bots and now charging users for verification. Koo, which allows users to express views in Indian languages, has already crossed 50 million downloads and is now flying into the rival's nest, starting a campaign on Twitter by making itself prominently visible on verified handles and offering them better deals on its platform at no cost.
The ‘Official’ tag is back on Twitter. Some official company accounts, including the likes of Uber India, McDonald’s, Hulu, Xbox, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and others are now showing the ‘Official’ tags beside the profile name. Twitter confirmed via the @TwitterSupport handle that the 'Official' label has been added to some accounts to "combat impersonation". For those unaware, the ‘Official’ tag was earlier introduced by Twitter to help users understand the veracity of certain official accounts, primarily of public companies or public figures, including the likes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, within hours of introduction, Twitter's new chief Elon Musk said he was ‘killing’ it.
The much-debated paid subscription for Twitter Blue seems to be rolling out in India after a bit of delay and is likely to cost Rs719 per month. Twitter Blue has been already been made available for users in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The subscription has been released for iOS devices including iPhones and iPad.
Twitter's new chief Elon Musk raised concern about a possible bankruptcy at a time when the social media platform also received a warning from a US regulator amid the exit of senior executives who were seen as future leaders. The billionaire entrepreneur conveyed to Twitter employees on a call that he could not rule out bankruptcy, reported Bloomberg News. This comes after two weeks Musk acquired the social media platform for $44 billion, a deal that credit experts believe has left the company in a difficult financial position.
After a chaotic takeover of Twitter, the new boss Elon Musk in his first email to company employees announced the ending of remote work. Musk, mentioned in the email that remote work would no longer be allowed and that Twitter employees would be expected to report to the office for at least 40 hours per week.
This new blue tick mechanism has brought a new flock of fake handles onto the platform. Reportedly, a Twitter user impersonating NBA star LeBron James demanded a trade from the Los Angeles Lakers. Many users were fooled by the tweet because the account that posted it had a blue tick. The account was soon suspended.
Elon Musk is progressing plans to slim down Twitter since he bought the 396 million-member platform for USD 44 billion (38 billion euros) on October 27. Musk’s deal has taken Twitter private, dissolved the platform’s board and enhanced his unilateral power as CEO. But mass redundancy announcements made since he took control have been scrutinised globally. Musk’s plans to restructure Twitter began with laying off top executives, before notifications were emailed to around half of the Twitter global workforce that they were being made redundant or that their jobs were at risk.
After a short delay, the new Twitter Blue, which now costs $8 per month and also brings along a blue verified check mark, has become officially available for iPhone and iPad users. Twitter's new boss, Elon Musk began hyping the new Twitter Blue soon after taking over and it is officially available now for iOS users.
While the revamped Twitter Blue services have only been introduced to iOS users in a limited number of countries, new chief Elon Musk confirmed that a broader rollout to other countries will be done "as soon as next week".
Elon Musk on Thursday tweeted that Twitter will soon add more "granularity" to verified badges, which will include details such as organisational affiliation and ID verification.
Musk also added that rollout of the revamped Twitter Blue services is only limited to iOS in a limited number of countries "with very little promotion". The CEO added that rollout will be expanded worldwide to all platforms.
In less than 2 hours of release, Twitter CEO Elon Musk decided to remove the "official" badge with a gray checkmark that was appearing in some profiles. Musk took to his official Twitter handle to announce his decision and said he has “killed” the idea of an “Official” badge with a gray checkmark. Musk wrote, “blue check will be the great leveler” and “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” The company will “keep what works and change what doesn’t.”
An 'Official' label has been added to the Twitter handle of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and some other ministers as the US-based social media platform started rolling out a feature to distinguish between the Twitter Blue account and verified accounts. Modi's verified blue tick Twitter handle @narendramodi was marked 'Official' with a tick mark enclosed in a circle. The same label was also seen on the Twitter handles of Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and some other ministers.
In another change to Twitter, the company is set to announce an "official" label for some verified accounts when it launches its new and debated $8 premium subscription product, the media has reported. According to Twitter's early-stage products executive Esther Crawford, the Twitter official label would be applied to select verified accounts including major media outlets and governments.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk sold 19.5 million shares of his electric car company Tesla worth $ 3.95 billion, news agency Reuters reported citing U.S. securities filings. This comes after he closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. After completing his USD 44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc, Elon Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal. Agrawal was fired along with other major executives upon completion of the takeover.
India’s first Twitter user Naina Redhu has recalled how the social media platform was a close-knit community where one could talk openly. Redhu joined Twitter when it was called TWTR. She has shared her thoughts with news agency ANI about the platform’s evolution and recent changes.
Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter isn’t appearing to bode well for the microblogging platform. For starters, the new chief’s decision to monetise blue ticks is drawing flak on the platform from regular users and celebrities alike. Now, there have been reports of plans to put the entirety of Twitter behind a paywall. Given the scenario, it’s understandable that some users would wish to leave the platform altogether. This is acting as a boon for Twitter alternatives, most notably Mastodon, which is an open-source social networking platform.
Twitter chief Elon Musk is reportedly considering putting Twitter behind a paywall in an effort to monetise the site as the billionaire entrepreneur claimed the platform has actually gained users since he took over the reins last week. The development comes amid several ongoing changes introduced by the new owner, including mass layoffs across the globe. The company is also trying to lure back employees, while some workers noted that the economics behind its soon-to-relaunch Twitter Blue subscription may cause the company to lose money.
Twitter has told advertisers that its daily user growth has hit an "all-time high" after Elon Musk's takeover last week, as several advertisers leave the platform amid internal chaos. Twitter's monetisable daily user (mDAU) growth has accelerated to more than 20 per cent after Musk takeover. "Twitter's largest market, the US, is growing even more quickly."
After a few hours of announcing his support for the Republican Congress ahead of the US mid-term elections, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that he is open to the idea of voting Democrat again in the future. "To be clear, my historical party affiliation has been Independent, with an actual voting history of entirely Democrat until this year," he tweeted. He further tweeted saying that he is open to the idea of voting Democrat again in the future. "And I'm open to the idea of voting Democrat again in the future," he tweeted further.
Amid the $44 billion chaotic acquisition of Twitter and the laying off of half of the micro-blogging site's 7,500 employees, Elon Musk, the new Twitter boss on Monday posted new Twitter rules while highlighting that the rules will "evolve over time". It should be noted that Twitter has faced criticism in the past, for the way it handled abusive behaviour and hateful content in the platform and it has been modifying its rules. "Twitter rules will evolve over time, but they’re currently the following:," Musk posted alongside an updated list of Twitter rules.
Elon Musk, the new Twitter boss has said that Twitter's Birdwatch feature will be renamed to "Community Notes" which gave way to an argument between Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey took on Musk over the micro-blogging platform's new feature and its vision.
Elon Musk in a bid to execute his plans for Twitter has appointed a core team of 5 members which includes the head of his family office, an Indian-origin former-Twitter executive, and Musk's lawyer.
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Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has criticised the decision by Elon Musk-run Twitter to sack its employees in India, saying that they should have been given a "fair time for transition". Vaishnaw's reaction, first reported by Business Standard, came as Musk fired about half of Twitter's workforce globally, including nearly 150-180 employees in India.
Elon Musk’s decision to charge users $8 per month to keep using their verified blue tick has drawn flak on the platform from users and celebrities alike. Emmy-winning comedian Kathy Griffin, best known for her reality TV series “My Life on the D-List”, appears to be the latest celeb to have taken up (proverbial) arms against Musk’s move. After her account got suspended, Griffin figured out a workaround for the ban — by using her late mother Maggie Griffin’s Twitter account to post her thoughts.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid has announced that she quit Twitter as it's no longer a "safe place" for anyone after Elon Musk bought the platform for $44 billion. On the heels of Twitter mass layoffs, the 27-year-old supermodel turned to her Instagram Story to let her 76 million followers know that she's no longer on the micro-blogging platform.
Twitter has now reportedly approached dozens of employees who lost their jobs, asking them to return after the social media platform sacked almost half of its employees last week. Those being asked to return were laid off by mistake, reported Bloomberg, citing sources. Others were let go before management realised that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the report said.
After Twitter launched a premium subscription service for Twitter Blue on Saturday, November 5, allowing users to buy the verification symbol for a monthly fee of $7.99 (Rs 655), several Indians started asking the microblogging platform's new owner, Elon Musk, about when the Twitter Blue service will roll out in India. Replying to one such question, Musk said: "Hopefully, less than a month". This means that people in India can avail the premium Twitter Blue subscription service this year onwards.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk has urged Twitter chief Elon Musk to ensure that human rights are central to the management of Twitter under the latter’s leadership. In an open letter issued to Musk, Türk addressed reports of sacking of Twitter’s entire human rights team and all but two of ethical AI teams and said that it was not “an encouraging start”.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey apologised to the employees of the company on Saturday, a day after the microblogging site laid off nearly 50 per cent of its workforce. In a tweet, Dorsey owned up for the current situation at Twitter and said he realises that many people are "angry with him".
After sacking nearly 50 per cent of the staff from Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Saturday took to Twitter to say "Power to the People". "Power to the People," Musk tweeted. This comes after Tesla CEO defended his decision of laying off employees from Twitter and said that there was no choice as the microblogging site is losing over $4 million a day.
For some of the nearly 200-strong Twitter India workforce, the Friday morning came with utter chaos when they lost access to their official emails and internal Slack and group chats, as they were unfortunate to be part of the global sacking in the most brutal Elon Musk way. Some of the employees who lost their jobs at Twitter India and did not wish to be named told IANS that when they logged in to their systems from home (Twitter is still in the work-from-home mode) on Friday, they were denied access.
With Elon Musk taking charge of Twitter, the top management of the social media company is undergoing a major revamp. Billionaire Musk, the world’s richest person, is said to be working with a few of his close business associates and trusted lieutenants to give Twitter a new shape. Along with venture capitalist (VC) David Sacks, Indian American Sriram Krishnan is also part of the Tesla CEO’s pack.
Tesla Chief Elon Musk, who acquired one of the world’s most influential social media platforms Twitter for $44 billion, has witnessed his worth decline by $9 billion, according to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Elon Musk, the new boss of micro-blogging site Twitter has announced that the company will charge $8 for the Twitter Blue service, including the much sought-after “verified” badge or "tick". Musk's announcement comes in the wake of his attempts to monetise Twitter and reduce its dependability on ads. The new Twitter boss also mentioned that the fee will be used to reward content creators on the platform.
Elon Musk is now the "sole director of Twitter" after the billionaire dissolved the microblogging platform's board of directors last week, according to a regulatory filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Background
Elon Musk took over Twitter on October 27 after months of negotiations and surprise u-turns. After Twitter accepted the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s $44-billion deal, Musk quickly moved to bring in several changes to the microblogging platform. He began by firing the company's entire board of directors, including CEO Parag Agrawal, in turn becoming the ‘sole director’ himself, which he claims is “only temporary”. He’d follow that up with eventual mass layoffs of the company’s global workforce, reducing the number of employees by nearly half.
However, what drew the most attention was the monetisation of Twitter’s blue-tick verification badge. Previously, the verification badge was provided to users free of cost, after a rigorous check of government-approved IDs and verified URLs in some cases.
However, under Musk’s revamp plans, the verification badges have been brought under the Twitter Blue plan, which is priced at $7.99 per month. Under the new rules, already verified users will lose their blue ticks if they don’t choose to pay the aforementioned amount within a period of 90 days.
The monetisation of verification, along with the mass layoffs, has drawn flak on the platform from regular users and celebrities alike, many of whom have denied to pay for verification, including the likes of Stephen King, Martina Navratilova, Shonda Rimes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and more.
The $7.99-per-month plan has already gone live in several countries, including India.
Explaining the reason behind the moves, Musk said that cost-cutting is the primary objective. He said that the company was losing over $4 million per day. He also clarified that exiting employees were given three months of severance pay, which was 50 per cent “more than legally required”.
As Musk continues to bring in changes to Twitter, follow this live blog for the latest updates on everything related to the takeover and its fallout.
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