Twitter closes offices and begins layoffs

Twitter employees are expected to find out via email on Friday whether they are still working for the online service after Elon Musk's takeover. The letter will be provided with the subject "Your role on Twitter," the company announced on Thursday evening in a circular mail published by several US media. According to media reports, with 3700 jobs, around every second job at the short message service could be lost. Tech billionaire Musk completed the purchase of Twitter for around $44 billion last week.

According to the circular, employees who can stay on Twitter should receive the email at 9:00 a.m. US West Coast time on Friday (17:00 GMT) at their company address. Anyone who loses their job will receive information about the next steps to their private e-mail address. On Twitter, it was understood that it was a "challenging experience," said the circular email, which began with the salutation "Team" and was only signed "Twitter".

The Twitter offices will remain closed on Friday and all access cards will be deactivated, it said. "If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home." The measure is intended to ensure the security of employees as well as Twitter systems and user data.

The step should therefore be a precautionary measure to rule out any protest actions by those who have been laid off. That would not be unprecedented: In November 2017, on his last day on the job, a support employee deactivated the Twitter account of then US President Donald Trump. It took about ten minutes for the account to be online again.

The circular said the job cuts were "unfortunately necessary to ensure the company's future success." Twitter was recently in the red. Musk had also taken out loans of around $13 billion for the takeover deal – and according to media reports, servicing them requires more money than the Twitter business generates in free funds.

For Twitter employees, the circular was the first official communication since Musk completed the Twitter purchase on Thursday last week, as reported by the Washington Post, among others. A general meeting with Musk was originally announced for Friday. However, this had been canceled – as well as a later date for it, it said, citing employees.

Employees were most likely to learn about Musk's ideas for the future of the service from the tech billionaire's tweets. The Washington Post wrote on Friday night that his publicized plans for new functions in the paid subscription offer Twitter Blue came as a surprise to most employees in the responsible department. "We all work for Donald Trump's White House," she quoted a staffer as saying. He alluded to the fact that Trump made announcements on Twitter, sometimes without consulting officials, and that even some of his ministers learned of their dismissal from tweets by the US President.