Twitter & Elon Musk’s story is taking turns as fast as a Tesla Plaid since the vibrant billionaire took over the company. As soon as the acquisition was completed earlier this week, Musk fired 4 top executives including the CEO Parag Agrawal.
Musk also put out a well-written summary of how he aims to move forward with Twitter’s advertisement policy and the company’s relationship with its partners (list of Top 20 Twitter advertisers).
Media Trolling
In an interesting turn of events, two fake data engineers from Twitter posed as fired company employees after Musk visited the HQ yesterday. These guys stood outside the Twitter HQ in San Francisco, CA with their office leftovers, mainstream media was tricked into reporting mass layoffs at the company.
Later on, when it was proven that this was a prank, the mainstream media outlets had to back off from their reports. Elon Musk then posted a meme of Rahul Ligma (a popular meme reference) and Daniel Johnson on Twitter taking a light jab at the media.
The rumors of mass layoffs at Twitter were put to rest with this prank and media trolling.
Million Dollar Compensation of the Fired Twitter Executives
Tens of millions of dollars are going to be given to the top Twitter executives fired by Elon Musk. These packages either result from their vested Twitter shares or severance packages.
Multiple media outlets are reporting different sums of these layoff packages. However, Ex Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is going to be paid between $38.7M to $57.4M (source: Reuters).
The now Ex-Chief Financial Officer of Twitter Ned Segal is set to receive $25.4 million for getting fired.
The Chief of Legal Affairs Vijaya Gadde s going to get somewhere between $12.4M to $34.8M for getting fired from the Silicon Valley-based social media company (sources: Insider, Reuters).
These executives were most probably fired because Elon Musk thinks they were involved in misreporting the wrong number of spam/bot accounts on Twitter during the Musk vs. Twitter lawsuit.
Elon Musk to Twitter Advertisers
Elon Musk addressed Twitter advertisers in an open letter he shared in a tweet (full text below).
By putting out his thoughts on this matter, he intended to put an end to speculation of what would be the future of ads and advertisements on Twitter after Elon Musk’s acquisition and taking the company private.
I wanted to reach out personally to share my motivation in acquiring Twitter. There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has been wrong.
The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.
That is why I bought Twitter. I didn’t do it because it would be easy. I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love. And I do so with humility recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility.
That said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies or play video games ranging from all ages to mature.
I also very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain and inform you; it can show you a service or product, or medical treatment that you never knew existed, but is right for you. for this to be true, it is essential to show Twitter users advertising that is as relevant as possible to their needs. Low-relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!
Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise. To everyone who has partnered with us, I thank you. Let us build something extraordinary together.
Elon Musk to Twitter advertisers
However, this is not something that is written in stone. Sarah Peronnette, Twitter’s Chief Customer Officer shared a tweet saying “Had a great discussion with Elon Musk last evening! Our continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged. Looking forward to the future”.
List of Top 20 Advertisers on Twitter
Media Matters took me on one of their press emails to a post that talks about Elon Musk’s impact on Twitter advertisements and partners.
They compiled the following list of the top 20 advertisers and partners most of which are giant multinational conglomerates.
- Home Box Office Inc. (HBO)
- Mondelez International
- Amazon
- IBM
- PepsiCo Inc.
- Best Buy Co. Inc.
- Apple Inc.
- The Coca-Cola Company
- Capital One Financial Corporation
- Procter & Gamble
- Unilever
- Merck & Co. (Merck Sharp & Dohme MSD)
- Disney
- CenturyLink (Lumen Technologies Inc.)
- Comcast Corporation
- Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook Inc.)
- Verizon
- Anheuser-Busch
- CBS (CBS.com)
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