Nov 21 – Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams in March of 2006, launching in July of that year. In the first few months, the company started to see 20,000 tweets per day. The social media platform quickly became a hit. By the following year, the number of tweets had tripled, and as of earlier this year, the platform retained more than 3 million active users. But now, with Elon Musk at the helm, the company’s future is in question. For starters, Elon Musk wants to move away from ads as Twitter’s primary revenue source…

Moving away from ads

Shortly after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a key ad industry trade group, published an open call to Twitter asking the brand to adhere to specific brand safety guidelines. Some suggest that it is for this reason that Musk wishes to move away from ads. He may want to be able to make decisions unilaterally about the site’s future, without constraints from a marketing industry that he does not control and hasn’t curried favor with.

Latest Twitter updates

Shortly after Twitter informed employees that it would close offices for several days, Musk requested for the company’s remaining engineering staff to appear in the San Francisco headquarters office.  Specifically, the email called for “anyone who actually writes software” to report to headquarters by Friday afternoon. However, he first requested that each individual send him a high-level report of the best code that they have worked on across the past 6 months.

According to Musk, the purpose of sharing all of this code and catching-up in the office is to conduct brief technical interviews that would help him gain a clearer picture of the Twitter tech stack. Musk stated that those who were authorized to work remotely could request video interviews, but also stated that only those who could not get to Twitter HQ or had family emergencies were formally excused.

HR mix-ups

From the technical side of layoffs, several employees who resigned last week informed media outlets that they retained access to select internal systems a day after having resigned. One person speculated that so many people from Twitter’s human resources department had exited the company that remaining staff were struggling to keep up with who had access, who shouldn’t have access and who needed access to company resources.

Security concerns

CBS News just lifted a 40-hour pause on operations of its Twitter page after initially citing “security concerns” regarding the platform’s future. “After pausing for much of the weekend to assess the security concerns, CBS News and Stations is resuming its activity on Twitter as we continue to monitor the situation”.

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