Twitter board agrees to $44 billion sale to billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I bet Tony Stark would have been significantly less of a whiny little bitch about it if his workers wanted to unionise, too.

Instead they threw in their lot with Mysterio which kicked off the events of Far From Home.

[LadyTevar]

I bet Tony Stark would have been significantly less of a whiny little bitch about it if his workers wanted to unionise, too.

Instead they threw in their lot with Mysterio which kicked off the events of Far From Home.

IIRC, there was only about what.. 5 people? All of whom had personal issues with something Tony did. Mysterio's own reason was so stupidly petty it was pathetic. He didn't like the name Tony gave his holographic program.
I forget what the seamstress' problem was.

[Ralin]

Though technically, it was Banner who carried that part out, Stark just helped him do it

Relying on a plan and technology figured out mainly by Tony Stark, if I remember right.

He also personally saved New York City from nuclear annihilation.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Though technically, it was Banner who carried that part out, Stark just helped him do it

Relying on a plan and technology figured out mainly by Tony Stark, if I remember right.

He also personally saved New York City from nuclear annihilation.

Which, in turn, was based on the quantum tunnel created by Hank Pym and needed Pym particles as fuel

True, he did redirect the nuke to blow up the Chitauri station, almost dying in the process. Something he wasn't above reminding the others of thereafter.

[Lost Soal]

Though technically, it was Banner who carried that part out, Stark just helped him do it

Relying on a plan and technology figured out mainly by Tony Stark, if I remember right.

He also personally saved New York City from nuclear annihilation.

Which, in turn, was based on the quantum tunnel created by Hank Pym and needed Pym particles as fuel

True, he did redirect the nuke to blow up the Chitauri station, almost dying in the process. Something he wasn't above reminding the others of thereafter.

Would have been nice if he'd mentioned it to Ross when he was complaining about the damage done during the battle of New York.

So Twitter now has a new CEO who is desperately trying to pretend she is in charge and won't have Musk messaging her every 10 minutes.

[bilateralrope]

Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder office over unpaid rent

Devin Coldewey
@techcrunch
5:28 AM GMT+12•June 15, 2023

Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord, and a judge has signed off on evicting the tech giant from its office there, court documents show.

Since its takeover by Elon Musk, Twitter’s business has more or less fallen into disarray, and there have been numerous reports of unpaid bills. While a contractor going unpaid during a rocky transition is unfortunate but not uncommon, ceasing to pay rent altogether for months suggests Twitter’s operations may be farther gone than anyone expected.

According to court documents and reporting by the Denver Business Journal, Lot 2 SBO LLC, the Chicago-based landlord that owns Twitter’s offices at 3401 Bluff St in Boulder, was provided a $968,000 letter of credit back in February of 2020, which it has been drawing on to pay the rent in lieu of ordinary payments (the details of this arrangement are somewhat obscure). That amount ran out in March, and the company has not paid since; if we assume rent was paid regularly from that sum, that places it at around $27,000 per month.

In May the landlord took it to court, and on May 31 the judge issued an order that the sheriff should assist in the eviction of Twitter within the next 49 days — i.e. before the end of July. The case number is 2023CV30342 in Boulder District Court.

As many as 300 employees once worked in Twitter’s Boulder offices, but between layoffs, other firings, and resignations, it is probably less than half of that now.

TechCrunch confirmed the legal records cited by the Denver Business Journal, but the Sheriff’s office explained it could not comment on matters until they were concluded. In the course of looking up the case another appeared apparently confirming a separate case in which a cleaning company is seeking $93,504 in unpaid fees from the company.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

What was Musk expecting with his "don't pay bills" plan ?

Though I have to admit that he managed to make it the new CEOs problem.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

No doubt going to be the first of many Twitter evictions.

[bilateralrope]

Elon Musk: Twitter sued by music publishers for $250m

7 hours ago

By Annabelle Liang
Business reporter

A group of 17 music publishers in the US has sued Twitter, claiming the platform enabled copyright violations involving nearly 1,700 songs.

The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) is seeking more than $250m (£197.7m) in damages.

In a lawsuit filed at the Federal District Court in Nashville, the NMPA claimed Twitter "permits and encourages infringement" for profit.

It says the situation has not improved since Elon Musk bought the company.

The NMPA, which represents firms - including Sony Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management and Universal Music Publishing Group - alleged that Twitter continues to "reap huge profits from the availability of unlicensed music without paying the necessary licensing fees for it".

It added that the infringements have given Twitter an "unfair advantage" over competitors - including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat - which pay for music licences.

Twitter "stands alone as the largest social media platform that has completely refused to license the millions of songs on its service," NMPA President David Israelite said in a statement.

Twitter did not directly respond to a BBC request for comment.

Mr Musk, who recently reclaimed the title of the world's richest person, bought Twitter last year for $44bn.

The NMPA also said: "Twitter's change in ownership in October 2022 has not led to improvements in how it acts with respect to copyright."

"On the contrary, Twitter's internal affairs regarding matters pertinent to this case are in disarray," it added.

NMPA cited Twitter's downsizing of "critical departments involved with content review and policing terms of service violations", and the resignations of trust and safety chiefs Yoel Roth and Ella Irwin.

The NMPA also alleged that Twitter "routinely ignores known repeat infringers and known infringements".

Earlier this month, Linda Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at media giant NBCUniversal, became the new boss of the troubled social media firm.

Ms Yaccarino oversees business operations at the platform, which has been struggling to make money.

Since buying Twitter, Mr Musk has cut 75% of its workforce, including teams charged with tracking abuse, and changed how the company verifies accounts.

Looks like Twitter blew up their DMCA safe harbor protections.

[bobalot]

Twitter Decides To Stop Paying Google, Despite Relying On It For Multiple Tools

Last week, when Elon Musk hosted conspiracy theory nonsense peddler RFK Jr. on a Twitter Spaces, he admitted that, despite firing somewhere around 85% of Twitter staff at the point he took the company over and just no longer paying rent or many other bills, he’s still struggling to get the company to break even. This is kind of incredible, given that pre-Musk, Twitter was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters. Obviously, the fact that advertisers have abandoned the platform (mostly because of Elon Musk himself) hasn’t helped.

But, really, the most incredible thing is that he can’t make the site profitable even when he’s not paying the bills.

The latest bill that he’s stopped paying is, according to Platformer, the Google Cloud bill, which hosts a wide variety of important internal Twitter tools, including some of their trust & safety tools. The report notes that, as with basically all of Twitter’s contracts, Elon has been trying to renegotiate them downward, but it had at least kept paying the Google bill, in part because Google was one of the companies that had stuck around and continued advertising on Twitter:

Twitter has been trying to renegotiate its contract with Google since at least March, the Information reported that month. It had also delayed payments to Amazon Web Services, leading the company to threaten withholding advertising payments.

At the time, Twitter decided to pay its Google Cloud bills in light of the fact that Google was (as of February) the company’s second-largest advertiser. It also pays to license the full stream of tweets to show in search results.

It’s unclear what changed. But as Twitter continued to push Google to lower its cloud costs, at some point it stopped paying its cloud invoices — and is now planning to move off the platform altogether.

Not paying Amazon is also notable, though Twitter only started using AWS a couple years ago. But still, these decisions to stop paying bills also means that some of the company’s biggest remaining advertisers may start pulling their ads as well.

Also notable, though is how Twitter strongly relies on Google Cloud for many internal tools. Platformer discusses how a key tool for removing both CSAM and bots (two things that Elon has said were top priorities, though his actions indicate otherwise) are hosted on Google Cloud and there seems to be little to no effort for Twitter to replace them:

Twitter’s core spam detection tools, and the systems that it uses to find violent extremism and media containing gratuitous gore, all run on Google Cloud. So are all of the systems that log data used by the trust and safety team to investigate bad actors. Shutting down GCP could leave the trust and safety team without a mechanism to investigate bad behavior.

Twitter now has three weeks to migrate over that tooling. Anything that is not migrated in time risks being shut down.

And, of course, all this comes out just days after it was revealed that Twitter’s use of PhotoDNA to detect and block known child sexual abuse material was borked, allowing that material to get uploaded to the site.

It really feels like Elon Musk has now turned Twitter into a giant game of Jenga, seeing just how many blocks he can remove without the whole thing tumbling over. So far, the whole thing has remained standing, but that doesn’t mean it will continue to do so.

Source

Not paying a multi-billion dollar company for it's services? Bold strategy from Space Jesus.

Mark Zuckerberg blew tens of billions on Meta and the Metaverse and still looks more competent than Musk.

[bilateralrope]

Twitter’s Lawyers Admit They’re Overwhelmed As Nearly 2000 Laid Off Employees File Arbitration Claims

from the flooding-the-system dept
Fri, Jun 16th 2023 12:19pm - Mike Masnick

Back in college, I took an arbitration class, and it was one of my favorite classes. The professor (James Gross, who just retired last year after teaching for an astounding 56 years) was amazing, and I became a little obsessed with the entire idea and process of arbitration as an alternative to the costly and much more time intensive court process. However, lots of big businesses became obsessed with the concept as well, and, as we’ve covered over the years, that’s resulted in them spending much of the early 2000s turning the system to their advantage.

First, they built in arbitration clauses to agreements that effectively blocked certain types of lawsuits with “binding” arbitration, which the Supreme Court said was fine. Then they said that unalterable “click-wrap” agreements with binding arbitration clauses could take away your rights to go to court. And the people studying arbitration results quickly learned that the businesses quite frequently win any arbitration claim, in part because the company is the one hiring the arbitrator, and if they side against the company too often, guess who isn’t getting hired again later?

So, forced arbitration agreements, for a while, turned into a method for big companies to screw over customers, users, employees and more.

But… over the last few years, we’ve been highlighting how people have started to fight back against the companies who forced arbitration on them by flooding them with arbitration claims. Don’t want to deal with class action lawsuits? Fine, how about a few hundred arbitration claims, each one you have to deal with separately? Amusingly, over the last few years, the same folks who spent decades twisting the arbitration system to their own advantage have been flipping out, now that arbitration claims have become a form of distributed denial of service attack in protest to the company’s bad behavior.

Now, as you well know, in the last few months, Elon Musk has laid off a huge percentage of Twitter’s former employees. When he took over the company it had around 7,500 employees. Within a month that number was closer to 2,500. The most recent report I’ve seen is that the company is down to around 1,000 employees. So, approximately 6,500 employees are gone.

Another important point: part of the purchase agreement that Musk signed (but apparently did not read very carefully, given his hilariously inept attempt to get out of it) was that employees under Musk’s ownership would get “substantially comparable benefits” to what they had under the old company, including severance payments:

Parent shall, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to, provide for each Continuing Employee (i) at least the same base salary and wage rate, (ii) short- and long-term target incentive compensation opportunities that are no less favorable in the aggregate than those provided to each such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time (provided that Parent shall not be obligated to provide such incentives in the form of equity or equity-based awards) and (iii) employee benefits (excluding equity and equity-based awards) which are substantially comparable in the aggregate (including with respect to the proportion of employee cost) to those provided to such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, during the Continuation Period, Parent shall provide, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to provide severance payments and benefits to each Continuing Employee whose employment is terminated during such period that are no less favorable than those applicable to the Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time under the Company Benefit Plans.

Of course, for a while, Musk, who verbally promised three months severance (which was below what the company had previously offered, and really only one month, since the first two months were required by the WARN Act, and were actually just continuing salary, since he had to give 60 days of notice for a layoff) refused to provide employees with any severance documentation. Then, when the documentation finally came, it was way less than they expected. They also included gag orders and giving up legal rights.

Many employees chose to fight this, including suing the company. But, those old pesky arbitration clauses meant that some of the lawsuits were dismissed, with the judge telling employees they had to go to arbitration, instead.

It turns out that many of them did.

1,986 former Twitter employees have filed arbitration claims.

And Twitter’s lawyers at the big law firm of Morgan Lewis are flipping out about it. They’re asking the arbitrators if they can combine the discovery process so they don’t have to go through 1,986 separate discovery efforts.

Given the identical and/or overlapping legal claims and factual allegations in these thousands of pending matters, a coordinated, universal discovery plan is imperative to litigate these matters efficiently, effectively, and fairly. Thoughtful coordination on the front-end across all pending matters will result in speedier resolutions, while also preventing prejudice, undue burden and waste of resources and expense for the parties and JAMS. Indeed, a coordinated, universal plan is the only practical way to resolve such an enormous number of similar arbitration matters.

Twitter’s lawyers note that there are four law firms handling the majority of the cases, with the largest (by far) being Lichten & Liss-Riordan (Shannon Liss-Riordan made herself known to Twitter employees basically as soon as Musk took over, so it’s not surprising that the majority of ex-employees went to her firm). Apparently 1,848 of the 1,986 arbitration cases have all come from this firm.

And while Morgan Lewis tried to get the firm to agree to a combined discovery plan, the firm has apparently rejected it (another high profile firm, run by another high profile lawyer, Lisa Bloom, apparently was willing to agree for the 49 cases that firm represented):

The Lichten & Liss-Riordan firm has rejected the concept of a universal discovery plan. Instead, they are seeking to schedule cases on a case-by-case basis with hearing dates as soon as September 2023. In one of their matters, the arbitrator has scheduled a hearing for January 10- 12, 2024. That decision and its implications for the rest of these related matters warrants JAMS’ immediate consideration of Twitter’s request.

The Bloom/Dixon firms, on the other hand, have negotiated and now executed an agreed upon UDP with Twitter.

Apparently Twitter’s lawyers hasn’t met with the other law firms that have brought arbitration claims yet. But, it seems they’re freaked out by the prospect of having to handle 1,848 separate discovery efforts.

The firm also notes that they wouldn’t be surprised if Liss-Riordan seeks to depose Elon Musk for each of the nearly 2,000 claims, because why not?

Twitter will seek coordination across the matters and various law firms because for most, if not all, witnesses, the testimony would be equally applicable across all arbitrations (or a large subset of them). These disputes will have to be briefed and resolved by potentially several hundred (or more) arbitrators. An obvious example is Elon Musk. Without conceding that Mr. Musk should be subject to deposition in the first place, whatever testimony Mr. Musk has to offer will be equally applicable to all other matters, in whole or in part, and it would be wholly unreasonable to permit repeated depositions of him or other individuals across the numerous arbitrations

The law firm is even arguing that if there need to be depositions, they should be universal across all for firms that are representing claims, or otherwise even having people give four separate depositions for each firm would be too much.

Well, yeah, maybe Twitter should have thought of that before laying off everyone without providing them the proper severance? Just saying.

Either way, Twitter’s lawyers basically beg JAMS (basically the biggest arbitration firm, which will be handling most of the claims) to let it effectively force the law firms to accept the company’s proposed universal discovery protocol:

We have arrived at an inflection point for these mass arbitrations. In the absence of an agreed-upon universal discovery protocol, adjudicating these approximately 2,000 arbitrations will be wholly impractical, there will be countless duplicative and unnecessary disputes, as well as the potential for inconsistent and even conflicting rulings, and the parties will waste enormous amounts of time, resources (including JAMS’) and effort across the arbitrations. Accordingly, Twitter respectfully asks that JAMS exercise its authority and discretion under Rule 6, and direct and assist the parties to agree on and implement a universal discovery protocol.

And, it seems like there’s a decent change that JAMS will agree. I mean, as fun as it would be to have to watch Twitter have to deal with 2,000 independent discovery requests, the company’s lawyers are not wrong to say much of it would be duplicative. The real question, though is how this can be done that recognizes that many of the 2,000 employees may actually have somewhat different claims that require somewhat different discovery demands.

Either way, it’s noteworthy that so many ex-employees are claiming a breach of contract.

Even Twitter's lawyers are overloaded.

[Broomstick]

If it weren't for the fact this is affecting real people it would be almost hilarious to watch Twitter and Musk implode.

[bobalot]

If it weren't for the fact this is affecting real people it would be almost hilarious to watch Twitter and Musk implode.

It's like watching a less competent version of Gavin Belson from Silicon Valley.

[bilateralrope]

Australia gives Twitter 28 days to clean up ‘toxicity and hate’

EURACTIV.com with AFP

Est. 3min Jun 22, 2023
Content-Type:
News Service

Australia’s internet safety watchdog on Thursday (22 June) threatened to fine Twitter for failing to tackle online abuse, saying Elon Musk’s takeover had coincided with a spike in “toxicity and hate”.

E-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant — a former Twitter employee — said the platform was now responsible for one-in-three complaints about online hate speech reported in Australia.

Inman Grant said Twitter had 28 days to show it was serious about tackling the problem or face fines of Aus$700,000 (US$475,000) for every day it missed the deadline.

She said Twitter must come back with a series of concrete steps showing “what it is doing to prevent online hate on its platform and enforce its own rules”.

“We need accountability from these platforms and action to protect their users,” she said.

“And you cannot have accountability without transparency, and that’s what legal notices like this one are designed to achieve.”

Since Musk bought the platform in October 2022, he has slashed more than 80% of the global workforce, including many of the content moderators responsible for stamping out abuse.

In November, Musk declared a broad amnesty that allowed tens of thousands of suspended or banned accounts to rejoin the platform.

“Twitter appears to have dropped the ball on tackling hate,” said Inman Grant, who worked on cyber safety at the company after 17 years at Microsoft.

She said the watchdog was “far from being alone in its concern about increasing levels of toxicity and hate on Twitter, particularly targeting marginalised communities”.

“We are also concerned by numerous reports of content remaining widely accessible that is likely in breach of Twitter’s own terms of service.”

Australia has spearheaded the global drive to regulate social media platforms, and it is not the first time that Inman Grant has publicly singled out Twitter.

She wrote to Musk in November, expressing fears that deep staff cuts would leave the company unable to meet Australian laws.

Indigenous journalist Stan Grant, one of Australia’s most respected media personalities, said in May he had lodged a complaint with Twitter about the “relentless racial filth” he had copped while using the platform.

Major music publishers in the United States launched a legal suit targeting Twitter this month, arguing that the platform had failed to stop “rampant” copyright infringement.

European Union vice president Věra Jourová also in June accused Twitter of choosing “confrontation”, after it pulled out of a voluntary digital code of practice.

Does anyone think Twitter is capable of complying here ?

[Solauren]

Australia gives Twitter 28 days to clean up ‘toxicity and hate’

EURACTIV.com with AFP

Est. 3min Jun 22, 2023
Content-Type:
News Service

Australia’s internet safety watchdog on Thursday (22 June) threatened to fine Twitter for failing to tackle online abuse, saying Elon Musk’s takeover had coincided with a spike in “toxicity and hate”.

E-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant — a former Twitter employee — said the platform was now responsible for one-in-three complaints about online hate speech reported in Australia.

Inman Grant said Twitter had 28 days to show it was serious about tackling the problem or face fines of Aus$700,000 (US$475,000) for every day it missed the deadline.

She said Twitter must come back with a series of concrete steps showing “what it is doing to prevent online hate on its platform and enforce its own rules”.

“We need accountability from these platforms and action to protect their users,” she said.

“And you cannot have accountability without transparency, and that’s what legal notices like this one are designed to achieve.”

Since Musk bought the platform in October 2022, he has slashed more than 80% of the global workforce, including many of the content moderators responsible for stamping out abuse.

In November, Musk declared a broad amnesty that allowed tens of thousands of suspended or banned accounts to rejoin the platform.

“Twitter appears to have dropped the ball on tackling hate,” said Inman Grant, who worked on cyber safety at the company after 17 years at Microsoft.

She said the watchdog was “far from being alone in its concern about increasing levels of toxicity and hate on Twitter, particularly targeting marginalised communities”.

“We are also concerned by numerous reports of content remaining widely accessible that is likely in breach of Twitter’s own terms of service.”

Australia has spearheaded the global drive to regulate social media platforms, and it is not the first time that Inman Grant has publicly singled out Twitter.

She wrote to Musk in November, expressing fears that deep staff cuts would leave the company unable to meet Australian laws.

Indigenous journalist Stan Grant, one of Australia’s most respected media personalities, said in May he had lodged a complaint with Twitter about the “relentless racial filth” he had copped while using the platform.

Major music publishers in the United States launched a legal suit targeting Twitter this month, arguing that the platform had failed to stop “rampant” copyright infringement.

European Union vice president Věra Jourová also in June accused Twitter of choosing “confrontation”, after it pulled out of a voluntary digital code of practice.

Does anyone think Twitter is capable of complying here ?

Sure... if they....

#1 - Hire a shitload of moderator staff
#2 - Manually verify accounts that spew that, i.e they want valid government ID from the country they claim to be in
#3 - Block all VPNS and similiar IP address diguiser methods
#4 - Start handing violators over to law enforcement.

Musk actually coming up to the cash to do that.

[Straha]

Matt Levine remains funny and punchy:

I do think that if you are hired as the new chief executive officer of a multibillion-dollar website company, and on your first day on the job your direct reports come to you like “we are wrestling with a difficult decision and now that you are here we would like to get your view on it,” and you are like “okay what is it,” and they are like “should we pay the cloud hosting bill so we can keep our website on the internet,” your first reaction will probably be to say “yes we should absolutely do that, why was this a hard question,” and your second reaction will probably be to think “I have made a terrible mistake.” To be fair Linda Yaccarino absolutely knew what she was getting into:

Twitter Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino intervened to help repair the relationship between the social-media company and Alphabet’s Google after a payment issue, a person familiar with the matter said, an early example of the new CEO’s management style.

Twitter is now paying Google for its cloud services after not consistently paying some of those bills, people familiar with the matter said. Those bills amounted to more than $20 million a month recently, people familiar with the matter said. ...

Twitter and Google have had significant business ties. Twitter has used Google’s cloud services for a range of purposes, including anti-spam technology and data-warehousing services, according to people familiar with the matter and past blog posts from both companies. …

Twitter’s spending on Google’s cloud services became a focus internally at Twitter after Twitter owner Elon Musk acquired the company late last year and quickly placed an emphasis on cutting costs and curbing reliance on vendors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under Musk’s ownership, Twitter has been accused of missing payments on some bills that Musk inherited when he took over and implemented a more austere spending style.

“The new CEO’s management style” is that when big vendors send her a bill for services that they provided as agreed and that are critical to Twitter’s functioning, she pays it. This was also the management style of Twitter’s previous CEOs, except one of them.

[Straha]

EDIT: Whoops, double post.

[bilateralrope]

Add Elon’s Buddy Larry Ellison To The Creditors List Of Those That Twitter Is Refusing To Pay

from the get-in-line dept
Mon, Jun 26th 2023 09:29am - Mike Masnick

We already knew that Twitter had stopped paying its cloud computing bills from Google and Amazon as Elon continues his “pursuit of profitability” that he himself destroyed in Twitter (remember, Twitter was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over at a much higher run rate, before Elon drove away somewhere around half of the advertising revenue of the company while simultaneously saddling it with massive debt). I may not be a massively successful business man, but I’m having trouble with the business logic of driving away half of revenue for no clear reason, while increasing the company’s expenses through unnecessary debt financing, combined with trying to make up the difference by breaching contracts left and right.

Apparently one of new CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first orders of business was to call up Thomas Kurian, who runs Google Cloud, and promise to start paying the bills again (and hopefully get Google to spend more on Twitter ads and maybe a licensing deal on the newly expensive API).

Either way, apparently Google and Amazon aren’t the only cloud providers Elon stiffed: the latest news is that they’re not paying their Oracle cloud bill.

Representatives for Oracle have started directly calling current and former Twitter employees in an attempt to collect on past-due invoices well into the six-figure range, the people said. Oracle has for several years provided Twitter with data-storage services, one of the people added.

Now, this one is particularly funny, given that Oracle founder (and chairman and CTO) Larry Ellison is a close friend of Musk’s and, somewhat famously, invested in Elon’s Twitter buyout. As you may recall, Ellison and Elon texted each other, with Larry basically promising to dump however much money into the Twitter buyout as Elon wanted, casually tossing off the idea of putting in $1 or $2 billion.

From the mockup we created after these actual texts were revealed in the Twitter purchase lawsuit:

<image>

In the end, it turned out that Ellison put in $1 billion (which is now valued at significantly less than that by basically everyone). I remember at the time, there was some talk of how this would be a business win for Oracle, who has desperately been trying to build up its cloud computing business which has definitely lagged the bigger name cloud computing companies (and even when it wins deals, like TikTok, those come from political connections rather than through standard business practices).

But instead of being a boon to Ellison’s Oracle, Musk has now set much of his billion dollars on fire, and is refusing to pay Oracle’s bills. It really raises serious questions about who would ever trust this guy in any future business deal ever. And will Yaccarino now have to have a call with Larry to “smooth things over” like she did with Kurian (notably: a former top Oracle exec) at Google?

Another creditor who could kill Twitter if they cut off their access due to months of non-payment.

[bilateralrope]

Linda Yaccarino’s vision for Twitter 2.0 emerges

Staff should be ready for "hand-to-hand combat" as company preps new ad offering.
HANNAH MURPHY, FINANCIAL TIMES - 6/30/2023, 1:26 AM

Twitter’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, is preparing a series of measures to bring back advertisers who had abandoned the platform under Elon Musk’s ownership, including introducing a video ads service, wooing more celebrities, and raising headcount.

The former NBCUniversal advertising head, who started as chief executive on June 5, is seeking to launch full-screen, sound-on video ads that would be shown to users scrolling through Twitter’s new short-video feed, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Yaccarino also plans to meet media partners, publishers, and talent agencies in a bid to bring celebrities, political figures, and other content creators to the platform.

The hope is that with content from high-profile names, Twitter can sell more advertising, and also facilitate sponsorship and brand deals between advertisers and creators.

In a meeting earlier this month with Twitter’s global sales team, Yaccarino told staffers the company was going to have to work hard to win back the trust of advertisers, according to one person with knowledge of the matter.

She said they would need to deploy “hand-to-hand combat”—persuading big brands in person rather than from behind their desks—as part of the effort, the person said.

“I do believe that they’re going to have superior ad product instantly [under Yaccarino],” said Lou Paskalis, an advertising veteran and chief executive of AJL Advisory. “The issue is content moderation. And it exists in two dimensions. For everybody else. And for Elon.”

“The hope is Linda will create a buffer between what he does, and a brand-safe environment on Twitter,” he added.

This account of Yaccarino’s vision for the platform is based on interviews with Twitter staffers, people familiar with her thinking and brands, advertisers, and ad agencies. Twitter declined to comment.

The plans are designed to attract more ad dollars as Twitter seeks to reverse its fortunes under the direction of Yaccarino, an advertising heavyweight known for her industry relationships.

After Musk’s $44 billion takeover, many big advertisers slashed or cut ad spending altogether in response to his relaxed stance on content moderation, erratic posts, and unorthodox leadership style. This wiped about 50 percent off Twitter’s $5 billion-a-year revenues, Musk has said.

Even before the takeover, Twitter was criticized by advertisers and investors for sluggish product innovation and having a weaker ads offering than peers such as Facebook parent Meta and TikTok.

Twitter’s new ad format, which is still in beta stage, is part of a renewed focus on video. It introduced the ability to support longer-form video earlier this year before launching a TikTok-style short-video feed last week.

Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson already has a new show on Twitter. The rightwing TV pundit is a divisive figure in keeping with Musk’s desire to keep the platform open to views across the political spectrum.

Yaccarino, who is based between New York and San Francisco, first emerged as a potential Twitter chief executive when NBCUniversal was working on a partnership with the company for Olympics content. She tried to seek out further tie-ups, forging a close business relationship with Musk in the process.

In her first month on the job, Yaccarino—nicknamed “the velvet hammer” in the ad industry because of her tenacity in dealmaking—is making her presence felt.

She is going to invest in re-building the advertising, sales, and partnership team, a requirement she negotiated with Musk upon joining, according to two people familiar with her plans. Musk had caused concern among advertisers and agencies by dismissing at least 80 percent of Twitter’s workforce, including many of the ad sales team, after taking over, in a significant cost-cutting effort to boost its flagging finances.

Yaccarino told employees at the recent global sales meeting she wanted to engage more with the press, and was planning to present her vision via Twitter Spaces, the platform’s audio feature, in the first week of August, according to one person familiar with the matter.

She and Musk have also told investors that she is planning to make commerce easier on the platform, including taking steps to build a digital wallet. Some of the shopping and creator plans were previously reported by Reuters.

In the longer term, Twitter is in the early days of exploring whether it can wield emerging generative AI technology in its ad business to swiftly generate, test, and improve campaigns, following in the footsteps of Google and Meta, who are exploring similar tools.

Yaccarino has also sought to mend relations with other partners. For example, Twitter has resumed payments to Google Cloud after Musk stopped paying bills with numerous contractors as part of his cost-cutting exercise. The news was first reported by Bloomberg.

She is in talks about a broader partnership with Google that would include advertising and access to some of Twitter’s data, according to someone familiar with the matter, and hopes to similarly renegotiate multiple contracts with tech groups such as Amazon, Salesforce, and IBM into single broader partnerships.

Above all, Yaccarino has the tricky task of persuading brands that their content will not run alongside harmful material, while maintaining Musk’s moderation-light bent. Twitter has its own technology to ensure marketing does not appear next to specific keywords or content from certain accounts, and claims the amount of toxic content has been reduced, but is seeking ways to prove this to advertisers.

Musk has said that most advertisers have either “come back or they said they will come back . . . with a few exceptions.” According to data from Sensor Tower, between November 2022 and May, 60 of the top 100 US advertisers paused advertising on Twitter for at least one month. Of these, 17 have resumed advertising.

The company had a small presence at the Cannes advertising festival last week led by Chris Riedy, its vice-president of global advertising sales, who announced before the event that Twitter was soliciting bids from third parties offering services that “give advertisers more control and transparency on the context in which their ads serve.” The company has received about 20 proposals, one person familiar with the bidding said.

Many brands see Yaccarino’s appointment as a boon for Twitter. The head of one big advertising agency said she had been in contact “straight away,” and would have “a big and fast impact on the way Twitter goes to market, particularly with clients.”

Others remain skeptical, warning of the risk that Musk interferes with her plans, and claim that the platform is still overrun with harmful content. Two large corporations said they were holding off from returning to Twitter due to concerns over Musk’s behavior and whether his edgy tweets align with the tone they wish for their brands.

“Either [Twitter and Yaccarino] turn this around and make a U-turn on the revenue trend and advertising within the next six to 12 months,” said the chief executive of another advertising group. “[But] if that does not happen until mid to end 2024, I think this is going to be a very dangerous and slippery path downwards.”

Additional reporting by Daniel Thomas in London and Richard Waters in San Francisco

© 2023 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

I suppose this might drive users away from Twitter faster.

Then there is the fun of when the customers get billed for ads that never get shown to users.

[bobalot]

The former NBCUniversal advertising head, who started as chief executive on June 5, is seeking to launch full-screen, sound-on video ads that would be shown to users scrolling through Twitter’s new short-video feed, according to three people familiar with the situation.

This sounds epically shit and would drive people away from Twitter.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The former NBCUniversal advertising head, who started as chief executive on June 5, is seeking to launch full-screen, sound-on video ads that would be shown to users scrolling through Twitter’s new short-video feed, according to three people familiar with the situation.

This sounds epically shit and would drive people away from Twitter.

Wouldn't be the first thing or the last to do that.

[Solauren]

The former NBCUniversal advertising head, who started as chief executive on June 5, is seeking to launch full-screen, sound-on video ads that would be shown to users scrolling through Twitter’s new short-video feed, according to three people familiar with the situation.

This sounds epically shit and would drive people away from Twitter.

I can see a month later, a $1/month opt out feature or similar.

[bilateralrope]

The former NBCUniversal advertising head, who started as chief executive on June 5, is seeking to launch full-screen, sound-on video ads that would be shown to users scrolling through Twitter’s new short-video feed, according to three people familiar with the situation.

This sounds epically shit and would drive people away from Twitter.

I can see a month later, a $1/month opt out feature or similar.

Nah. A subscription stops the site showing you ads makes far too much sense for Musk to allow it.

[Mr Bean]

So new Twitter update

You can't see twitter posts period without logging in, which means I will never click Twitter links ever
Also not great for possible new users, that change turns Twitter a place you won't bother linking to unless they are already logged in.

All those places where they post things to twitter or link to twitter? Musk was throwing around numbers like 30% of twitter traffic is people not logged in, good luck getting those people to create accounts.

[Ralin]

Can't make it the everything app if everyone isn't registered!

They're still convinced they can make an international or at least western version of Wechat. To be fair that does seem like the only chance Musk has of breaking even at this point.

[bilateralrope]

Can't make it the everything app if everyone isn't registered!

They're still convinced they can make an international or at least western version of Wechat. To be fair that does seem like the only chance Musk has of breaking even at this point.

Doesn't Wechat have the major advantage of the Chinese government not allowing anyone to compete with it ?

Also that would mean trusting Musk, and Twitters remaining engineers, with financial transactions. Then regulators come into play.