Why Elon Musk is so desperate for Twitter to make money
by Russell Brandom from The Verge - All Posts on (#65CYA)
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge It's been six days since Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter, and the changes have been both furious and fast. He's proposed cataclysmic layoffs - somewhere between 50 percent and 75 percent of the company's staff, depending on which reports bear out. He's established an entirely new user tier, in which users will pay $8 a month (formerly $20) to receive algorithm boosts and the prestige of verification. He's also proposed a paywall feature for videos and there are rumors of a plan for paid direct messages.
The ideas have come so fast that it's hard to keep track of it all, let alone parse a coherent strategy. But if you take a few steps back, there's a fairly straightforward theme: Twitter needs to make money and fast. The ideas have...