Elon Musk has emailed Twitter employees, most working remotely, ordering them to return to the office immediately for at least 40 hours a week and warning of “difficult times ahead”.
A pair of missives seen by The Associated Press marked Musk’s first companywide message to employees who survived last week’s mass layoffs. Many have had to rely on the billionaire Tesla CEO’s public tweets for clues about Twitter’s future.
“Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message,” wrote Musk, before he described a dire economic climate for businesses like Twitter that rely almost entirely on advertising to make money.
“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” Musk said. “We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”
Musk’s memo followed a live-streamed conversation this week trying to assuage major advertisers, his most expansive public comments about Twitter’s direction since he closed a US$44 billion (NZ$73b) deal to buy the social media platform late last month and dismissed its top executives. Several well-known brands have paused advertising on Twitter as they wait to see how Musk’s proposals to relax content rules against hate and misinformation affect the platform.