Elon Musk told Twitter staffers that he wanted the social media group to build up a user base of at least 1 billion people globally, Photograph: Brian Lawless/PAElon Musk warned Twitter staffers its business needed to “get healthy” and undergo a “rationalisation of headcount and expenses” as he addressed the social media platform’s employees directly for the first time since launching his $44 billion takeover bid.
Doing so would mean ensuring people are not “harassed” on Twitter, he said, while also adding an array of features to emulate Chinese platform WeChat, a “superapp” where users can send messages, payments, shop or book taxis in one place. His answers in the hour-long meeting, during which questions from employees were read out to him by Twitter’s chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, suggest that he is still forging plans for how he will run the company.
Musk said that advertising would remain important to driving revenues but that he hoped to diversify into payments, subscriptions and paid-for user verification. In an early presentation shared with investors, he said he would seek to quintuple revenues to $24.6 billion by 2028, according to a source familiar with the document.