Happy Monday, y’all! So in this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute, I wanted to focus on one story, Elon buying Twitter. The deal finally went through, and now we wait to see what the repercussions will be.
Elon hit the ground running:
Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022
And almost immediately, he started making staff changes:
Elon Musk reportedly fired several executives at Twitter including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, legal head, Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel, Sean Edgett.
At least one of the fired executives were escorted out of Twitter’s office earlier today.
🔗: https://t.co/lPSb3WQJgK pic.twitter.com/RR5Vqvx2M3
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 28, 2022
Then he started addressing user concerns:
Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.
No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
Elon also clarified that he’s investigating the possibility of extending how many characters a tweet can be and increasing the length of videos that can be shared. The verification process will also be revamped, and likely tied to Twitter Blue subscriptions in the future.
How Will Twitter Be Different Under Elon?
Probably the biggest change users will notice immediately will center on content moderation. I’m already seeing users claim they are suddenly gaining followers and are no longer shadow or search-banned. I’ll be paying a much closer eye on my Twitter stats for a while, but so far I haven’t seen an unusual changes.
Elon will be extremely transparent, maybe sometimes even TOO transparent. He’s already been tweeting details from internal meetings at Twitter along with details from ongoing court cases with the company. It does make for VERY interesting content, and Elon knows that.
Additionally, Elon is a pretty shrewd businessman, so he has a lot of ideas for how Twitter can increase revenue and change the user experience. So we will no doubt see a lot of tinkering with the UX and functionality over the coming weeks and likely months.
For the most part, I am liking what I am hearing from Elon so far. Like me, Elon has always been very concerned about the heavy-handed content moderation that happened under previous Twitter leadership. The content moderation efforts always felt like they were born out of activism rather than trying to improve the user experience, which should be the ultimate goal.
Not all of Elon’s ideas sound great at first blush. It seems he wants to change the verification process and tie verification to having a Twitter Blue subscription. Which I think will ultimately cause more problems than it solves, but we’ll see.
Overall, this is the most excitement I’ve seen around Twitter in years. I’m already seeing friends that haven’t been on Twitter in years returning, so I’m curious to see what Twitter under Elon looks like. I will say this: It will be interesting to see how many of Elon’s ideas that have been floated so far actually come to be. Elon hasn’t been shy about sharing his suggestions for improving or changing Twitter. But once he spends some time with the company and has a better handle on its structure, he may find out that some of those initial ideas aren’t feasible. Or he may discover some new ideas that weren’t apparent from the outside.
Either way, Twitter will be interesting again. And it’s been WAY too long since I could say that!
See you next Monday, y’all have a great week!
