Musk begins his Twitter ownership with firings, declares the 'bird is freed'

[adroth]

Musk begins his Twitter ownership with firings, declares the 'bird is freed'
By Sheila Dang and Greg Roumeliotis
October 28, 20226:05 AM PDT

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/elon-musk-completes-44-bln-acquisition-twitter-2022-10-28/

NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Elon Musk has taken ownership of Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) with brutal efficiency, firing top executives but providing little clarity over how he will achieve the ambitions he has outlined for the influential social media platform.

The CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and self-described free speech absolutist has, however, also said he wants to prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division.

Other goals include wanting to "defeat" spam bots on Twitter and make the algorithms that determine how content is presented to its users publicly available.

Yet Musk has not offered details on how he will achieve all this and who will run the company. He has said he plans to cut jobs, leaving Twitter's 7,500 employees fretting about their future. He also said on Thursday he did not buy Twitter to make more money but "to try to help humanity, whom I love."

Less that 10% of 266 Twitter employees who participated in a poll on messaging app Blind expected to still have their jobs in three months. Blind allows employees to air grievances anonymously after they sign up with corporate emails.

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[girder]

Elon Musk's plan to turn Twitter into a super app is a step closer now that he owns the platform

Elon Musk has finally closed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, leaving employees and users wondering what he plans to do with the social-media platform.

Although reports vary about Musk's full intentions, the billionaire has made repeated claims that the acquisition would play a part in the creation of a super app, or what he has also referred to as an "everything app."

He plans for the app to be named X, as discussed in a tweet earlier this month, which said: "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app."

X wouldn't be the first app trying to cover a bit of everything. In fact, Musk indicated in May that he might look for inspiration from Tencent's WeChat, a Chinese social-media juggernaut that's one of the world's biggest super apps.

WeChat acts as an all-encompassing service, which provides video chatting, games, photo sharing, ride sharing, food delivery, banking, and shopping, among other things.

Super apps of this kind have yet to catch on in the US but Musk has hinted that he may be planning to create the first one.

For reference, the super-app most familiar to people here in the Philippines would be Grab.

Though I have serious doubts about the prospect of being able to pivot Twitter into a similar service, not the least of which because Twitter itself has a somewhat dubious business model to start with.

An ideal starting point would be a fintech service like PayPal or GCash, or something that already has commercial transactions built in.