I really
tried not to mention El*n in this section of the newsletter. But while he’s been
focusing on Tesla in public this week, the storm he’s caused inside Twitter with his acquisition bid continues to swirl.
Bloomberg reported this week that CEO Parag Agrawal has kicked off a reorganisation of staff:
Executives told workers of plans to pull back resources for some long-term ambitions, including audio spaces, newsletters and communities, in favor of focusing on more immediate needs, like user growth and personalization efforts, according to people familiar with the matter. That means many employees will be shuffled within the company’s consumer product group, the people said.
This set off alarm bells for me — Geekout runs on Twitter’s Revue newsletter platform and most weeks we run a Twitter Space to accompany it. There’s no sign these products we use will disappear, but they clearly risk being somewhat sidelined (don’t worry - Geekout will continue whatever happens!).
Twitter has made a big push into the creator economy over the past couple of years. While not all of its initiatives were working, Spaces are clearly popular and things like Communities and Super Follows arguably just need a few tweaks and the right promotion to become successful.
We’ll have to wait to see how that plays out, but a bigger storm could be brewing for Twitter staff. Musk
made clear this week that he’s no fan of remote work, saying Tesla employees had to return to the office or lose their jobs. Given Twitter is incredibly flexible about its employees locations these days, will the new boss reverse that course if the deal goes through? That could prove
very unpopular indeed.
