Elon Musk will start laying off thousands of Twitter employees on Friday amid growing exodus of advertisers

Billionaire Elon Musk plans to cut half of Twitter’s workforce, fulfilling plans to cut the costs of the social media platform he acquired for $44 billion last month, people with knowledge of the media have said. topic.

“In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” Twitter management said in an email reviewed by Bloomberg. “We recognize that this will impact a number of people who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success in the future.”

The company will notify affected staff members Friday at 9 a.m. San Francisco time, according to the memo. Amid the layoffs, Twitter plans to temporarily close offices and suspend badge access “to help ensure the safety of every employee as well as Twitter’s systems and customer data,” the memo said.

All told, Musk wants to cut about 3,700 jobs on San Francisco-based Twitter, people with knowledge of the matter said this week. The contractor had started giving hints about his staffing priorities ahead of the deal, saying he wanted to focus on core product. “Software engineering, operations and server design will rule the roost,” he tweeted in early October.

Security staff at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters made preparations for the layoffs, while an internal directory used to search for colleagues was taken offline on Thursday afternoon, people with knowledge of the incident said. affair. Employees have been preparing for layoffs for weeks. In recent days, they’ve been rushing to connect via LinkedIn and other non-Twitter avenues, offering each other advice on how to survive losing their jobs, the people said. Former Twitter engineers are also using social media to cater to former “Tweeps” looking to land jobs elsewhere.

Musk has also joined with advisers to find new ways to make money from the blogging platform, including charging for verifications, which can help distinguish real users from fake accounts. It also plans to relaunch a long-discontinued short-video tool called Vine, a way to compete with popular video-sharing apps like TikTok. Another product under consideration, The New York Times reportedare paid direct messages, which would allow the base to send private messages to high-level users.

Several advertisers, meanwhile, have held back on placing ads on the platform until they have a clearer picture of Musk’s plans. The new owner said he wanted to remove some content moderation, raising fears that hate speech, misinformation and other potentially dangerous content could flourish even more freely. General Mills Inc. said it was temporarily suspending advertising on Twitter, joining volkswagen Audi from AG and General Engines Co. to rethink their presence on the platform.

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