For several weeks, Elon Musk has been worried about how many people see his tweets. A few days ago, the CEO of Twitter closed his account for a day to see if it could increase his audience. The move comes after several prominent right-wing accounts that Musk interacts with complained that recent Twitter changes had reduced their reach.
“It’s ridiculous. I have over 100 million subscribers and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions,” Musk said in a meeting with engineers and advisers, according to The Verge’s sources.
One of the company’s two chief engineers suggested that less than a year after Musk bought Twitter, interest in his antics had faded. Employees showed the director internal data on interactions with his account, along with a Google Trends chart. According to the information provided, in April last year, the billionaire was at the “peak” of popularity in the search rankings, marked with a score of “100”, and now has only 9 points.
Musk, it seems, was not happy with the news, and decided to simply fire the engineer who expressed his opinion. He also instructed staff to track how many times each of his tweets was recommended, according to employees.
About two months ago, Twitter added a view counter for posts. Then Musk promised that the function would help to understand how dynamic the platform is.
Twitter announces the View Count, so you can see many times, and the tweet haen been seen! This is normal for video.
Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2022
However, the effect was the opposite: emphasizing how little interest the posts arouse in people, compared to the total audience. At the same time, according to a recent study, Twitter usage in the US has fallen by almost 9% since Musk’s acquisition.
Twitter sources say that the counter feature itself may contribute to the decline in reach. The Like and Retweet buttons have been scaled down to show views, making them harder to click.
On Wednesday, the social network seriously “fallen” for the first time after Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Users could not make publications – they got a message about “exceeding the daily limit of tweets”. It turned out that the employee had accidentally deleted data for an internal service that sets Twitter speed limits. The team that worked on the service left the company in November as part of massive layoffs.
Overall, a survey of current Twitter employees paints a picture of a troubled workplace where everything depends on Musk’s whims. Such chaos makes it less likely that the billionaire will ever recoup the $44 billion he spent to buy Twitter and could accelerate his bankruptcy.
“The majority of our work time is devoted to three main areas: putting out ‘fires’ (mainly caused by firing the wrong people and trying to recover from it), performing impossible tasks and ‘increasing efficiency’ without clear guidance on the expected end results,” said one employees
In the near future, the Federal Trade Commission plans to audit the company, and employees doubt that Twitter has the necessary documentation to pass the review. Last year, before Musk’s arrival, the FTC fined Twitter $150 million for breach of contract; another violation will almost certainly result in additional millions of dollars in fines and a flurry of news stories – perhaps once again increasing the reach of Musk’s tweets.
Twitter will charge $1,000 per month for the “golden tick” and another $50 for each additional company account
Source: The Verge
