Elon Musk has had a crazy week after completing the purchase of Twitter and, therefore, having become the owner of the company. The manager has had to carry out the dismissal of half the staff (about 4,000), has announced controversial functions from the first minute, and has not stopped posting tweets with plans for the future of the social network. Musk, however, You’ve also had time to communicate with your employees.
He did it on November 9, by means of an email in which he warned of the hard times ahead and in which he officially shared his intention to end teleworking and, therefore, force all employees to spend at least 40 hours a week in the office.
Also has communicated with its employees in person through a meeting convened, as indicated TheVerge, 20 minutes before it took place, and in which he has been dedicated to dealing with some of the key issues of Twitter, as well as resolving the main doubts of the staff. In this meeting, in particular, future functions, economic concerns and the measures that Musk has been taking in recent weeks have been discussed. These are the most important points and what the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has said about it.
Elon Musk wants Twitter to be your bank
The current owner of Twitter wants to make the platform a kind of bank, where users can send money anywhere in the world, in the same way that they send, for example, a direct message. This is what Elon Musk has said about it.
I think there is a transformational opportunity in payments. And payments are really the exchange of information. From an information point of view, there is not a big difference between, for example, sending a direct message and sending a payment. They are basically the same thing. In principle, a direct messaging stack can be used for payments. And that’s definitely a direction we’re going to go, allowing people on Twitter to be able to send money anywhere in the world instantly and in real time. We want it to be as useful as possible.
His intention, moreover, goes beyond being able to send and receive money. You want users to be able to store their earnings and offer services to people tailored to their balance.
If you can simply have a balance on Twitter that can be positive or negative, and when it’s positive, the interest rate is better than what you could receive elsewhere, and when it’s negative, the interest rate is lower than what you see somewhere else, now you have a much simpler system.
Elon Musk’s intention to make Twitter a bank also includes offering solutions for services that, due to their age, would not use Twitter as a compatible payment method.
Then a debit card is attached to the Twitter account to be compatible with older payment systems, because not everyone accepts Twitter. So if you have more than a certain balance, you automatically send people a debit card. You want compatibility with your existing financial infrastructure.
Elon Musk on the possibility of declaring Twitter bankrupt
The tycoon does not rule out the possibility of declaring Twitter bankrupt if they fail to generate more revenue on the platform. He has highlighted new features, such as those related to subscriptions.
The reason we’re going all out with subscriptions is to keep Twitter alive.
We definitely have to bring more cash than we spend. If we don’t do that and there is massive negative cash flow, then bankruptcy is not out of the question. That is a priority. We can’t scale to a billion users and sustain massive losses along the way. That is not feasible. I don’t think we will.
About telecommuting
Musk has reiterated your opinion on telecommuting, an activity that, let us remember, he banned on Twitter just a few days ago through an email sent to employees. He claims that people are more productive when they are in person.
Regarding remote work, I mean, it’s a consistent policy that I have at Tesla and SpaceX, which is that we need to be in arrears in the office and for a reasonable amount of time. It’s not like some crazy number of hours. I’ll put in crazy hours at the office, but I’m not asking everyone else to put in crazy hours at the office. But it’s just my philosophy that people are much more productive when they’re in person because the communication is so much better.
If you are sitting in the same room and you can interact with people, it is much better than if you are not sitting in the same room. There is a reason for having offices.
It stands out, yes, that sometimes makes exceptions and allows remote work to “exceptional people”.
Now, if someone’s contribution is so significant that they can overcome the communication difficulties of being at a distance, then they should stay on Twitter. But it will be a higher bar. They have to be much better at overcoming the communication issues of being remote. There are a lot of people at Tesla and SpaceX who work remotely, but it’s an exception for exceptional people. And I completely understand if that doesn’t work for some people. That is the new philosophy of Twitter.
Attract content creators to Twitter, another of Musk’s goals
Elon Musk also wants to make Twitter the home of content creators who are currently on YouTube or other platforms, in order to make users consume their videos on the social network, and this – and more specifically, its limitations in terms of length of videos, etc.—don’t force them to redirect you to other platforms. This is his strategy.
As a general principle, if we’re figuring out why people click away from Twitter so we don’t trap people on the site… You know, let’s say someone is a content creator on YouTube. As long as they can post their video to Twitter and monetize it to at least the same degree as YouTube, naturally they would also post their video to Twitter.
But right now, content creators can’t post the length of the video they’d like to post and they can’t monetize it, which means they can’t pay the bills. […] We’re not trying to put YouTube out of business, but I’m just saying, do we really need to give YouTube a ton of free traffic? Maybe not. So at least give creators a choice if they want to put their video on Twitter and earn the same amount they would on — or maybe a little more than — YouTube or TikTok or whatever.
I think we’re going to try it. Let’s find a bunch of content creators that we think are great on YouTube and say, “Hey, would you consider putting your content on Twitter, and we’ll pay you 10 percent more than YouTube and see how it goes?”
In parallel, Musk has highlighted his intention to make Twitter go beyond tweets. He wants to turn the social network into a multimedia platform, but, he points out, he doesn’t think it’s necessary to “copy something just because someone else has done it.”
We want to expand to be a kind of multimedia platform. We are that to some extent. We are the strongest when it comes to anything that is writing and in real time. But we also want to have that for photos and videos and not in a way that copies what everyone else is doing.
I don’t think we should copy something just because someone else has. We just want to focus on how we make Twitter as compelling as possible, where it’s the most enjoyment, the most learning. Where you spend an hour on Twitter and you don’t regret it. Sometimes, you know, on some of the social media platforms, you could spend an hour, but you regret it, right? Not naming names, but, you know, it’s like you want to spend an hour and say, “Wow, that’s been a great hour.”
About advertising and recommended content on Twitter
Elon Musk also wants advertising on twitter; its main source of income today, is transformed into content that may interest the user.
On the advertising front, I don’t think we should have a separate ad engine and tweet recommendation engine because we really want to show people ads that are as accurate to their interests as possible. An ad done really well, that’s what someone would really want to buy, especially if that’s when they want to buy, it’s actually content. For that to be content, you have to have a wide range of ads. Being asked to sign up for a mortgage when you have no interest in it is annoying and unwanted.
I’d love to see ads for gadgets. If I saw gadget ads, I love gadgets, of course I would buy all of them in one click. Even if they’re not that great, I’ll still buy gadgets. I love technology. I will see widget content, but not an ad or an ability to purchase the widget. So I have to send it to my assistant like: “Please buy this widget”. This is how it goes in general. But I would love to click on it and buy it.