Even before Elon Musk aka Chief Twit finally purchased Twitter last week, there has been fear of massive layoffs. Initially the first reports were around 75%,of Twitter’s employees would be let go. Then that number had dropped to around 25%. Many had hinted the layoffs regardless of how big, would happened on Monday, October 31st as November 1st was the cut-off date for employees to remain eligible to receive their year-end Stock (Grant) Compensation. So far only a handful of employees are no longer with the company and those were from the executive team. Chief Twit did fire the previous…
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The conference was going to be the first since 2015 has been scheduled to start on November16th. No reason has been provided for the late cancellation, but the timing is too much of coincidence with the Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter last month. In another sign of the upheaval happening internally at Twitter, the company has called off its Chirp developer conference just two weeks before it was scheduled to take place on November 16th. The company alerted developers and other attendees in a brief note that didn’t provide a reason for the cancellation. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on…
…and not just for Twitter Blue subscribers, but everyone. The new Twitter Blue is expected to be live by November 7th (the date Musk is demanding or those employees responsible would be out of a job). The new Twitter Blue was initially going to be $19.99 per month. However, after a Twitter exchange with American Author Stephen King on Tuesday, Musk may drop the price for the new Twitter Blue to $8 USD (and pricing in other countries based on ‘their spending power’) per month. Twitter Blue is suppose to include several other features (ad-free content is not one of…
Chief Twit (Elon Musk) is now suggesting the price of the premium Twitter Blue subscription could be $8 USD (the cost outside the US will be adjusted for the purchasing power of consumers in those markets) which is down for the $19.99 a month he had mentioned yesterday. However, he is still holding firm that a Twitter Blue subscription is going to be required for verification (something that prior to his merger/take-over was free). At the same time, Twitter plans to add new perks to the service. As a subscriber, you’ll see fewer ads and have the ability to post…
The day after Chief Twit (Elon Musk) announced new radical changes for Twitter Blue ($19.99 a month fee and ‘verification badge’) by November 7th comes word the service may soon stop offering Ad-Free content. When Twitter Blue began rolling out in the US last fall, the company positioned ad-free articles as one of the main reasons to subscribe. A little more than a year later, it looks like Twitter will discontinue that feature. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company plans to stop offering Twitter Blue customers the ability to access ad-free articles from publishers. The Journal did not state how soon Twitter…
With the ongoing uncertainty with Twitter verification, Cybercriminals are trying to take advantage of the confusion. Emails are being sent from a Gmail account (twittercontactcenter) claiming to be from Twitter Services with a subject Re: Twitter Warning. The email claims Twitter users can keep their ‘free verified status’ if they confirm they are a ‘well-known person’ (what if I am a robot?). The email is sent from a Gmail account, abd links to a Google Doc with another link to a Google Site, which lets users host web content. This is likely to create several layers of obfuscation to make…
This year-end employee benefit sheds a very bright light as to why Musk is in such a hurry to get the lay-offs done. As reported last week: The forthcoming layoffs are likely to occur before November 1st. The timing may give Musk the opportunity to avoid paying out stock grants to outgoing workers. According to The Times, such payouts “typically represent a significant portion” of an employee’s pay. The New York Times report this weekend he plans to lay off employees before Tuesday, November 1, thus cutting staff off from receiving stock grants as part of their compensation. In response to…
Days after Elon Musk (aka Chief Twit) took over Twitter, he is making big and not so popular opinion plans. Though much like everything else involving him and Twitter this could (and hopefully will) change. Now he wants to raise the monthly subscbrtion fee for the Twitter Blue and also have the service include a verification badge. $20 sounds like a lot of money just to get a verified badge and many folks like Kara Swisher are not ready to pay that amount. A poll by investor Jason Calacanis — to which Musk replied “interesting” — also has a majority of the people saying…
Today is Sunday, October 30th: time for the weekly roundup of the good, the bad and the ugly tech news of the week! The Good Samsung has rolled-out a ‘maintenance mode’ feature on their Galaxy S22 phones (other models will get this feature next year). Before handing over their phone to a tech for repairs, the owner will activate Maintenance Mode. This will create a temporary user account for the tech to be able to install diagnostic apps and have full access to the phone. However, the user’s personal information (contacts, photos, etc.) are inaccessible to the tech. Once the…
After over six-months of on again, off again and lawsuits…Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk finally closed the deal on purchasing Twitter on Thursday, October 27th. The final price tag of tag of the merger between Twitter and Musk’s subsidiary X Holdings II, Inc. was $44B USD. What does this mean for the 16-year old once publicly held company? Rumors have been flying over the past week, some propagated by Musk himself including laying off 75% of the staff. Here is break-down of the recent news before and after Musk’s take-over/merger of Twitter: Elon Musk reportedly tells Twitter he won’t lay…