Elon Musk starts changing Twitter as its new owner

Less than 24 hours after completing the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk decided to change his homepage.

He asks to log out the access user twitter Employees familiar with the matter, who asked to speak anonymously without the company’s permission, were redirected to an “Explore” page showing trending tweets and news stories. Previously, visiting Twitter’s homepage while logged out would only show a sign-up form, encouraging the creation of an account to view tweets. Musk’s directive, implemented late Friday, requires the vice president to be involved in overturning a code freeze put in place to prevent rogue employees from making changes during the takeover.

While Musk didn’t spell out the reasons for the change broadly, the message to the employees who observed it was clear: No longer a sacred cow. Inside the old Twitter, such a decision would have been debated among teams for weeks. But this is the new Twitter. As one former executive told me: “It’s definitely a way to show that you’re in charge now.”

Changing Twitter’s homepage is an example of how Musk began rapidly changing the company from the inside out in less than three days as “chief Twit”. Although he is preparing to lay off most of his staff in the coming days, he has been quick to make changes to Twitter itself, such as ordering the renaming of its paid subscription feature Super Follows to “subscribe” to Twitter’s mobile app in an emergency update. He also discussed using Starlink, his satellite internet service at SpaceX, to offer Twitter in currently inaccessible countries.

The employees tasked with completing Musk’s tasks worked late into the night and weekends, while their managers drew up lists of team members to be laid off. When Musk fired former CEO Parag Agrawal and other executives last week, he did so “for a reason” to avoid paying the tens of millions they would have received, a person familiar with the matter said stock stock. Now employees fear layoffs will begin before Nov. 1, when a significant portion of them will receive stock grants paid out in cash at $54.20 per share. (information It was first reported that Musk fired a Twitter executive. )

Meanwhile, Musk is leaning on his inner circle to help him better understand what he just bought. He had been hiding in a quarantined area of ​​Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, parked outside a Tesla convoy, and guarded by new security guards at the entrance. Dozens of people from his family office, other companies and social circles have been added to Twitter’s employee directory and given company email addresses, according to messages seen by employees and internal communications. edge.

These include Alex Spiro, Musk’s personal lawyer and Twitter’s de facto general counsel; Andrew Musk, his relative who works for his brain interface startup Neuralink; Jehn Balajadia, The COO of The Boring Company; David Sacks, an influential political donor and member of the “PayPal Mafia”; Jason Calacanis, VC and longtime friend of Musk; Sriram Krishnan, former Twitter product lead, now Andreessen Horowitz The venture capitalist is also a friend of Musk. (New York Times It was first reported that some of them were meeting with Twitter employees. )

Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s former product chief who was fired by Agrawal in May, was also at the office on Friday, sparking rumors of his possible return. Complicating the idea is that Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s current head of product, is still with the company.

On Saturday, co-hosting the popular Karakanis go all out Musk was a guest on a podcast earlier this year, tweet He had met with Twitter’s head of security, Yoel Roth, and was “impressed with his dedication and perspective on security issues.”The tweet references a Ross’s theme Details how the company banned accounts that participated in a “trolling campaign” that posted racial slurs. “Twitter will focus on identity and security in the coming weeks,” Calacanis followed up another tweet.

Musk’s top priority is figuring out who he wants to keep in Twitter’s engineering organization. On Friday, engineers were asked to print out their last 30 to 60 days of code contributions and submit them to Musk and Tesla engineers for review.They were then quickly told to shred their printouts and display the code on their computers, as first reported platform game Casey Newton.Some engineers have been insisting twitter account Tracking the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet, expect him and Tesla engineers to visit the company’s New York City offices on Monday to continue the code review.

Managers have been told that the purpose of the review is for Musk to see who can work with the speed and efficiency he demands, and that he wants to weed out engineering managers who don’t code frequently. “A software manager must write good software, otherwise he can’t ride a horse like a cavalry captain!” Yes Tweets in May.

Since Musk’s acquisition, Twitter’s communications division has stopped responding to media inquiries or requests for comment on the matter.