Elon Musk Starts Putting His Imprint on Twitter

Mr. Musk has previously told investors that he has big plans for Twitter. That includes building Twitter into a “super app” like those that are popular in Asia, with social media, payments and messaging all part of one service. Mr. Musk has said he will call this “everything app” X.

Mr. Musk has also said he will add subscription services to Twitter, bringing in revenue directly from users instead of relying solely on advertisers. Such services could include giving people the option of using Twitter without seeing ads if they paid a fee.

On Wednesday, Mr. Musk arrived at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco and met with Twitter employees throughout the rest of the week, five people with knowledge of the meetings said. Late on Thursday, top Twitter executives, including Parag Agrawal, the chief executive, as well as the chief financial officer, the top legal and policy executive and the general counsel, were fired.

Those executives thought they had until Friday before the deal would close, two people said. But Mr. Musk’s money for the deal came in earlier than expected, so he went forward with closing the deal on Thursday and firing the executives, they said.

Mr. Musk has set up a “war room” at the company to dig into his new purchase, two people said. Tesla employees and other trusted lieutenants of Mr. Musk also met with Twitter employees, four people said. One was Alex Spiro, Mr. Musk’s personal attorney, who discussed content moderation and legal issues with Twitter employees, three people said.

“He’s going to pick and choose the best he has in his network to come in and tackle some of these issues,” said Patrick Hillmann, the chief strategy officer of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which invested in Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter.

Other investors who provided money for Mr. Musk’s Twitter deal — including the venture capitalist David Sacks — also held meetings at the company on Friday, two people said. Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s former head of product who was fired by Mr. Agrawal in May, was spotted in the building, three people said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/business/twitter-elon-musk.html