Twitter’s relaunched premium service—which grants blue-check “verification” labels to anyone willing to pay $8 a month—was unavailable Friday after the social media platform was flooded by a wave of impostor accounts.
A Twitter user posing as Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly falsely tweeted that insulin was now free, prompting an apology from the actual company.
The latest erratic move on the minds of major advertisers—that the company depends on for revenue—was Musk’s decision to abolish a new “official” label on high-profile Twitter accounts just hours after introducing it.
The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names—not their account names—and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk.’
Musk is expected to proceed with plans to lay off about 50 percent of Twitter’s staff, according to people familiar with the matter.
Elon Musk said Wednesday that Twitter will not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that, a process that will take at least a few weeks.
Elon Musk is telling Twitter advertisers he is buying the platform to “help humanity.” The message posted Thursday on Twitter came a day before Musk’s deadline for closing his $44 billion deal to buy the social-media company and take it private.
While job cuts have been expected regardless of the sale, the magnitude of Elon Musk’s planned cuts are far more extreme than anything Twitter had planned.
Twitter said earlier this week that it intends to close the deal at the agreed-upon price, but the two sides are still booked for an Oct. 17 trial in Delaware over Musk’s earlier attempts to terminate the deal.
The offer comes just two weeks before Twitter’s lawsuit seeking to force Musk to go through with the deal goes to trial.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter lobbed more accusations at each other Tuesday in the latest round of legal filings over Musk’s efforts to rescind his offer to buy the social media platform.
The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance asked the questions in a June 15 letter, shortly before Tesla CEO Elon Musk raised the issue as grounds to back out of a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
A former head of security at Twitter has filed whistleblower complaints with U.S. officials, alleging that the company misled regulators about its cybersecurity defenses and its problems with fake accounts.
In a fiery filing, Twitter accuses Musk of violating the merger agreement “because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
Shares of Twitter slid more than 9% in the first day of trading after billionaire Elon Musk said that he was abandoning his $44 billion bid for the company and the social media platform vowed to challenge Musk in court to uphold the agreement.
The company is likely to face a lengthy courtroom battle with one of the world’s richest and most mercurial individuals, which could paralyze its ability to launch new initiatives and attract workers.
Twitter could push for a $1 billion breakup fee that Musk agreed to pay under these circumstances. Instead, it looks ready to fight to complete the purchase, which the company’s board has approved and CEO Parag Agrawal has insisted he wants to consummate.
Twitter provided the figure in a call with executives Thursday during a briefing that aimed to shed more light on the company’s fake and bot accounts as it tussles with potential buyer Elon Musk over “spam bots.”
Twitter plans to offer Elon Musk access to its “firehose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets in an effort to push forward the Tesla billionaire’s agreed-to $44 billion acquisition, according to multiple news reports.
Elon Musk is threatening to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information about its spam bot accounts.
