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| Twitter, 4 January 2023 |
Elon Musk's 'faster', smarter, more informative, Twitter social media platform has been displaying the agility of dial-up Internet access in late 1990s rural and regional Australia.
Commencing at around 5am on Wednesday 4 January 2023 the numbers began to build for problems when accessing Twitter via website or app, notifications nowhere to be seen and, problems uploading to the site or having a tweet accepted. The degree of buffering was impressive, as was the alerts that something was wrong and try again.
Twitter's underwhelming performance appeared to be affecting users in Australia and New Zealand.
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More people appear to have been reporting problems in New Zealand.
Meanwhile on the morning of 4 January The Guardian newspaper revealed that Twitter Inc. is being sued for over $136,260 in unpaid rent on its California Street branch in San Francisco after Elon Musk's takeover. The landlord of 650 California Street has filed a lawsuit seeking back rent, as well as payment of attorney’s fees and other expenses.
The Guardian went on to say:
The company’s headquarters are located at another San Francisco address, 1355 Market Street, where Twitter has also reportedly fallen behind on rent, according to the New York Times.
In addition to not paying rent and laying off workers, Musk’s Twitter is also auctioning off high-end office furniture, kitchen equipment and other relics from the past, when Twitter had over 7,500 full-time workers around the world and free lunch and other office perks were common. Some three-quarters of Twitter’s employee base is estimated to have left the company, either because they were laid off, fired or quit.
Among the items Twitter is auctioning off are a pizza oven, a 40-quart commercial kitchen floor mixer (retails for around $18,000; bidding starts at $25), and high-end designer furniture such as Eames chairs from Herman Miller and Knoll Diamond chairs that retail in the thousands.
Even a Twitter bird statue (bidding starts at $25) and a neon Twitter bird light display (bidding starts at $50) are up for grabs in this fire sale-style auction reminiscent of the dotcom bust of the early 2000s when failed tech startups were selling off their decadent office wares.
In yet another reversal of Twitter Inc's established policies, Musk announced he will allow political advertising on the ailing platform commencing sometime in 2023.
It is no coincidence that 2023 will see the contest between candidates seeking party endorsement heat up ahead of the November 2024 US presidential election.
Wall Street Journal, 4 January 2023:
Twitter Inc. plans to expand the political advertisements it allows on the social-media platform after banning most of them in 2019, in the latest policy change by new owner Elon Musk.
The company also said Tuesday that it is relaxing its policy for cause-based ads in the U.S., which are ads that call for people to take action, educate and raise awareness in connection with the following categories: civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship or social-equity causes.
In the coming weeks, the company said it would "align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets," according to tweets from the Twitter Safety account. It didn't specify what that means and said it would "share more details as this work progresses." Twitter didn't respond to a request for comment.
Twitter largely banned political ads in November 2019, taking the opposite approach of social-media competitor Facebook at the time. Jack Dorsey, who was then chief executive of Twitter, said of the decision: "We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought."
The policy came with some exceptions that allowed for ads in support of certain politics-related topics such as voter registration. At the time, political advertising represented only a small portion of Twitter's overall advertising revenue.
Advertising in general has been a heated topic since Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of the company in October. Like many social-media companies, most of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising -- in 2021, roughly 89% of the $5.1 billion that the business brought in was from ads.
Some companies paused ad spending on the platform after the takeover amid uncertainty over how Mr. Musk planned to run the company…..
But as of Dec. 18, about 70% of Twitter's top 100 ad spenders from before the takeover weren't spending on the platform, according to an analysis of data from research firm Pathmatics…..
Meanwhile, Musk's obsession with morphing Twitter into something other than a global social media platform sees this rumour about his engagement with Tesla Inc. surface.....
The New York Observer, 3 January 2023:
Elon Musk has reportedly named a deputy at Tesla amid shareholder pressure for him to resign as the electric carmaker’s CEO after its stock price tumbled 70 percent in 2022 and deliveries missed expectations. Zhu Xiaotong, who goes by Tom Zhu, is head of Tesla China and was promoted to oversee the company’s U.S. factories and sales operations in all of North America and Europe, Reuters reported today (Jan. 3).
Shareholders didn’t appear to think much of the news, as Tesla shares had fallen 13 percent by mid-afternoon.
An internal organizational chart reviewed by Reuters shows Zhu has retained his title as Tesla’s vice president for Greater China. But the new responsibilities in North America and Europe effectively make him the highest-level executive at Tesla after CEO Musk.
The promotion was confirmed by two anonymous sources who Reuters said had seen the new organizational chart. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment….
Tesla’s China chief is rumored to be Musk’s successor
Zhu, who graduated from university in 2004 and holds a New Zealand passport, according to Chinese tech news site 36kr, joined Tesla in 2014 from an infrastructure background. He was credited for growing production capacity significantly at Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, which opened in 2019 and is now Tesla’s most productive plant in the world….
The New York Observer, 3 January 2023:
Elon Musk has reportedly named a deputy at Tesla amid shareholder pressure for him to resign as the electric carmaker’s CEO after its stock price tumbled 70 percent in 2022 and deliveries missed expectations. Zhu Xiaotong, who goes by Tom Zhu, is head of Tesla China and was promoted to oversee the company’s U.S. factories and sales operations in all of North America and Europe, Reuters reported today (Jan. 3).
Shareholders didn’t appear to think much of the news, as Tesla shares had fallen 13 percent by mid-afternoon.
An internal organizational chart reviewed by Reuters shows Zhu has retained his title as Tesla’s vice president for Greater China. But the new responsibilities in North America and Europe effectively make him the highest-level executive at Tesla after CEO Musk.
The promotion was confirmed by two anonymous sources who Reuters said had seen the new organizational chart. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment….
Tesla’s China chief is rumored to be Musk’s successor
Zhu, who graduated from university in 2004 and holds a New Zealand passport, according to Chinese tech news site 36kr, joined Tesla in 2014 from an infrastructure background. He was credited for growing production capacity significantly at Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, which opened in 2019 and is now Tesla’s most productive plant in the world….
