A very unlucky Friday The 13th for Twitter...
Elon Musk's massive acquisition of Twitter has been put on hold, following the publishing of a filing that estimates how many fake/spam accounts are on the site.
The Tesla owner paid $44 billion to take over the company in April.
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted on Friday (13 May).
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1525049369552048129?s=20&t=Fe9mjTyST_SU0xIaqlfhCg
Twitter published a filing on Monday that estimated that less than 5% of users on the platform were fake accounts or bots.
Musk said that, along with loosening restrictions for what can be said on the site, he would look to get rid of all fake/spam accounts on Twitter.
Before the holding was announced, two top managers at Twitter were fired from the company on Thursday (12 May).
Senior executives Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck were both sacked, with Beykpour saying he was asked to leave by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
"The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision," Beykpour said.
"Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.
https://twitter.com/kayvz/status/1524787801757126656?s=20&t=Fe9mjTyST_SU0xIaqlfhCg
"I hope and expect that Twitter’s best days are still ahead of it.
"Twitter is one of the most important, unique and impactful products in the world.
"With the right nurturing and stewardship, that impact will only grow."
Agrawal said that most hiring and backfill would be paused for the foreseeable future in a memo that was seen by
The Verge.
The CEO also said that non-labour costs would be cut down on, including travel, marketing, and contractors.
"Please continue to treat Twitter’s resources as you would your own, and manage tightly to your budgets, prioritizing what matters most," Agrawal said.
