Many in the Web3 space consider Twitter to be the social media equivalent of the public square. And of late, there’s been a fair bit of turmoil in the ranks since Elon Musk took over, most recently in the form of its crypto division head leaving the business.
Elon Musk: A week of internal strife
Earlier this week, Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to staff loaded with company reforms, leading to reports of a mass exodus of employees. At the time, tech reporter for Fortune Magazine wrote:
At face value, it sounded like a fatal body blow to the business, but a clarification further on in the Twitter thread issued a critical caveat that would have been advisable to include from the outset:
“One point of clarification on the tweet about 75% of twitter employees leaving— this is chatter I’m hearing about the perceptions among people at twitter. It is not based on any official company data.”
The reporter now claims that 1000-1200 employees have resigned, although that remains to be seen or its just based on “perceptions among people at Twitter”.
Crypto division head exits, now what?
Although the true extent of the exodus is unknown, Bloomberg has reported that Twitter’s crypto division head Tess Rinearson has left the social media platform. Rinearson was a big proponent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), particularly those used for profile pictures, and it’s not clear how her departure will impact Twitter’s embrace of NFTs going forward.
In addition, it was reported that senior software engineer, Hamdi Allam, also left Twitter’s crypto division amid internal strife and staff cuts that have been on the rise since the eccentric billionaire’s takeover of Twitter last month.
Following Rinearson’s departure, it’s not clear how the announcement will impact a recent move by the social media giant to trial a program allowing users to tweet NFTs with an embedded click-through button that can then be used to buy digital assets from participating marketplaces.Twitter was treading along a blockchain-embracing path but since Elon Musk’s dramatic takeover, that appears to have slowed down.
The internet’s favourite troll has caused a stir since taking ownership, even embracing memes that Twitter has one foot in the grave.
While some question Elon Musk’s focus given his other ambitious projects and hashtags such as #RIPTwitter trending, recent daily average usage statistics suggest that perhaps some of the fears of a Twitter collapse are overblown.
