In one day, Elon Musk’s Twitter has lost two key executives, instituted an in-person 40 hour workweek, and hinted at potential bankruptcy.
Today may have been the most chaotic and concerning at Twitter so far.
In the course of a day, Elon Musk talked about removing the legacy blue checkmark, demanded that everyone work at least forty hours per week in the office, lost two key executives, and floated the idea that the company could be bankrupt as soon as next year. Let’s get into it.
The old blue checkmark could die
The first big story that came out of what seems like a neverending saga for Twitter is that Elon Musk, who just launched the new version of Twitter Blue which includes a blue checkmark, may get rid of the original blue checkmark entirely.
Musk took to Twitter (of course) to claim that many legacy blue checkmarks were “corrupt.” Musk’s solution to that apparent issue will be to remove all legacy verification “in [the] coming months.”
Removing legacy verification will essentially remove all of the verification work that the company has done over the years and, for anyone who has not subscribed to the new Twitter Blue, will cause them to lose their verification on the platform entirely.
With a ton of impersonators creating fake accounts already since they can buy verification, it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the legacy verified people and entities on the platform lose their current verification.
Another big story from today was the loss of two key executives at the company. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, and Robin Wheeler, the head of ad sales, have both resigned today.
The departure of those two executives are concerning as both of them were the ones who had just held a Q&A call with Elon Musk on Wednesday, November 9, to try and assure users and advertisers that the platform and company were stable and a good place for companies to partner for ads.
On the call, Musk had tried to argue for the new version of Twitter Blue that gave anyone a blue checkmark.
