Is Twitter shutting down? Elon Musk jokes about the death of Twitter in a series of tweets
The new owner of the social media platform took to Twitter in response to news that the company’s offices would be temporarily closed to staff.
The Twittersphere has been thrown into disarray in recent weeks after the controversial takeover by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. But recent revelations seem to point to a possibly terminal decline that has left users worried about the future.
Earlier this week Musk sent an email to all staff asking them to submit to a period of “long hours at high intensity” or leave. They were given just 24 hours to agree to the demands or be forced out.
But internal reports have emerged suggesting that far fewer staff members than Musk had hoped were willing to comply with the new demands, potentially leaving the site short-staffed at a pivotal moment.
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Has Twitter closed its offices?
The severity of the situation was clear but appeared to escalate further on Thursday evening when fresh reports stated that the company’s office had been closed to staff. The internal memo stated that the office buildings would be closed to staff “effective immediately.”
In the announcement the company said that the offices would be reopened on Monday, 21 November but the abrupt closing has led to rumours swirling online about the state of the social network.
The message continued: “Please continue to comply with company policy by refraining from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.”
Elon Musk jokes about the death of Twitter
The chaos of recent weeks can be traced quite confidently back to the surprise purchase of the network by Musk. He massively overpaid for the site and landed the company with billions of dollars’ worth of debt to fund the takeover.
In a bid to boost the platform’s profitability he introduced, and quickly suspended, an $8 blue tick verification option and has fired a raft of staff.
Undeterred by the astonishing capitulation of the social media site, Musk took to Twitter to joke about the situation.
“How do you make a small fortune in social media?” he asked, shortly after rumours of a Twitter shutdown began to spread on the site. “Start out with a large one.”
But the world’s richest man remained confident about the role that Twitter would continue to play in digital communications. With talk of a demise bringing swathes of traffic to the site to get the latest information, Musk claimed that they had “hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol.”
So is this the end for Twitter? It’s too soon to say for sure, but it is fair to assume that the social media site could look very different in a few months’ time.