“The sunshine remains to be on on Twitter, however actually simply that.”

(San Francisco) Solely 4 months have handed since Elon Musk purchased Twitter and instantly fired half of the workers, however the boss has continued to put off staff and fire up controversy, casting doubt on the platform’s viability.

This weekend, the California firm once more laid off at the least 200 staff, or 10% of its workforce, in line with The New York Occasions.

Because the finish of October, between social plans, resignations and engineers personally fired for criticizing Elon Musk, the corporate has already gone from 7,500 to 2,000 staff, in line with estimates from Every day Mail and different area of interest media like the knowledge.

“The sunshine remains to be on on Twitter, however actually simply barely,” commented Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence.

It predicts that the social community, which had greater than 368 million month-to-month customers worldwide in 2022, will lose about 32 million between 2022 and 2024, because of the unfold of poisonous content material and/or because of a rise in quantity distribution.

“The workers has been decreased to a skeleton, so there are only a few folks to resolve technical and content material moderation points,” she explains to AFP.

Realizing that the chief doesn’t seem to hunt to please advertisers or associations.

reputation

This weekend, he defended cartoonist Scott Adams, who stated he “needs nothing to do” with the black inhabitants.

A number of newspapers have introduced they may now not publish his cartoons, however Elon Musk on Sunday accused the US media of being “racist in the direction of whites and Asians” after it had been “longtime racist in the direction of non-white folks.”

Underneath his management, “Twitter has change into a machine for spreading conspiracies and messages of hate,” Angelo Carusone, president of Media Issues for America, stated not too long ago.

Based on this non-governmental group that combats disinformation, commercials for varied firms have appeared alongside “narratives of Holocaust-denying anti-Semites”.

“Twitter has misplaced a whole bunch of its high advertisers, and its income is down in comparison with final 12 months,” says Jasmine Enberg.

She defined that manufacturers should not have “belief” within the proprietor of the platform, whose viewers has all the time been restricted in comparison with its neighbors, the 2 giants Google and Meta (Fb and Instagram).

And that pattern will solely worsen: “Twitter managed to keep away from a decline in its person base in 2022 specifically as a result of folks needed to look at the saga between Musk and the community reside,” she believes. However the entrepreneur is “now not updated”.

That’s what an engineer on web site tried to elucidate to Elon Musk earlier this month, in line with him the sting.

The billionaire requested the builders why his messages are learn lower than earlier than. A pc scientist defined to him that it was a reputation concern reasonably than an algorithm – he was fired.

“on the important thing”

On the identical time, a number of former staff and companies filed complaints towards the San Francisco company for arbitrary breaches of contract or non-payment of lease and payments.

And Blue, the paid subscription that launched final 12 months in nice confusion as a substitute for advert income, hasn’t met with success. In mid-January, solely 180,000 folks signed up for the formulation in the US, in line with The Data.

“Twitter should almost double its variety of subscribers worldwide by 100 to make up for its loss in promoting income,” notes Jasmine Enberg. “It’s not a badly began combat, it’s an insurmountable job.”

Esther Crawford, this product’s engineer, is among the many workers thanked this weekend. She was one of many few managers to point out help for her new boss, even retweeting a photograph during which she was seen sleeping in a sleeping bag at her office.

“Those that make enjoyable of cynicism ought to be on the sidelines, not within the enviornment,” she wrote on Twitter on Monday, defending her “optimism and exhausting work.”

Elon Musk — as soon as once more the richest man on this planet in line with Bloomberg — is on the lookout for somebody to switch him on the helm of Twitter, a transfer that would assist the platform bounce again.

Till then, “until you decide to terminate the service, Twitter will survive,” believes Jasmine Enberg. “There’s a loyal person base, and the community can survive even with technical issues and unsightly atmospheres.”