Elon Musk has officially taken over control of the tech giant Twitter and immediately made some major changes.
In the first 24 hours of acquiring the company, Musk changed the homepage. Users that are logged out of Twitter will now be directed to a trending tweets and news homepage instead of a sign-up for Twitter form encouraging people to create accounts. It was at this time that Musk implemented a new code that required a VP override so that employees unhappy with the takeover couldn’t make any changes to the site.
By swiftly changing the homepage is such a manner, Elon Musk or the “Chief Twit” has demonstrated who is in charge at Twitter. With rumors still swirling around Twitter with significant layoffs upcoming, Musk has fast-tracked many changes to the Twitter business model. He has ordered a paid subscription feature to be called “Subscriptions” and immediately sought to update this on the mobile application.
Discussion are ongoing to implement Twitter on Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet company, which would make Twitter available across the globe.
Musk has settled in at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, reportedly in a sectioned-off area of the building with a fleet of Tesla’s out front and new security guards at the entrance. He has brought in his inner circle in to review plans for Twitter, giving many of them Twitter email addresses and directory contacts.
Musk’s priority has been understanding the Twitter code and who he needs to keep in Twitter’s engineering department. This past Friday, Musk asked Twitter engineers to print out all codes written in the past 30-60 days to be reviewed by Tesla engineers, however this directive changed rather quickly and engineers were told to shred all code printouts. Musk still has plans for Tesla engineers to review all of Twitter’s codes and may soon visit the New York City office to continue the reviews.
After the takeover, Twitter communications department has stopped responding to questions or interview requests from the press.