Despite promises to the contrary, Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired dozens of sales and engineering employees last week, according to reports.
This is the third time he has ordered layoffs despite promising they were finished after taking over Twitter last October. Mr. Musk has ordered the firing of over two-thirds of Twitter staff. These unprecedented layoffs included key advertising, communications and engineering employees.
The new layoffs come after Mr. Musk ordered an overhaul of how advertising works on Twitter. He wants Twitter’s ads to work similarly to Google, focusing on keyword tracking based on searches as opposed to user profile activity.
Mr. Musk announced the proposed change last week on Twitter.
“We’re taking the (obvious) corrective action of tying ads to keywords & topics in tweets, like Google does with search.” Mr. Musk tweeted. “This will improve contextual relevance dramatically.”
Reportedly, Mr. Musk gave his engineering team one week to integrate this change. Engineering staff, including one fired engineer who reported directly to Mr. Musk, implied that a week deadline is unrealistic.
Thank you tweeps
— Marcin (@marcinkadluczka) February 19, 2023
End of 7 years at Twitter! @elonmusk for learnings and energy in last 3 months to improve Twitter & Ads!
I believe Twitter can really improve ads in 2-3 months (no necessarily in a week though)
Wish I could be actually fired not just deactivated pic.twitter.com/ygfrIfwZXY</ a>
Several others, including previous Twitter staffers, threw cold water on Mr. Musk’s idea for revamping Twitter’s ad system and timeline.
“I worked on Twitter Ads for 4 years. This was one of my starter projects back in 2011. It’s nowhere near as good as training a model to predict ads engagement,” one user tweeted in response to Mr. Musk’s announcement.
Other users and former employees pointed out that what works for Google may not work for Twitter. Indeed, a system like the one Mr. Musk described has not been tried successfully on any social media platform.
Mr. Musk has been called out in the past for unrealistic deadlines, like when he gave employees a little over a week to revamp Twitter Blue or pack their bags.
Twitter’s new advertising style is likely a way to reinvigorate what was previously a major moneymaker for the site. After Mr. Musk’s takeover, several prominent companies distanced themselves from Twitter due to the possibility of figures they didn’t like politically rejoining the platform.
According to reports, Twitter has suffered at least a 42% decrease in advertising revenue from the top 30 companies, resulting in a loss of $52.8 million.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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