Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has criticized Elon Musk’s leadership at Twitter, in which he expressed disappointment at how the Tesla billionaire is handling the micro-blogging platform since the takeover.
Jack who expressed his remarks on his Twitter alternative platform Bluesky, disclosed that Musk should have walked away and paid the $1 billion, a termination fee if he or Twitter had backed out of the deal last year.
Jack wrote, “If Elon or anyone wanted to buy the company, all they had to do was name a price that the board felt was better than what the company could do independently. This is true for every public company. Was I optimistic? Yes. Did I have the final say? No. I think he should have walked away and paid the $1 billion.”
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Also, Jack criticized Musk’s introduction of the Blue Badge subscription policy which he said payment as proof of humans is a trap.
In his words, “Payment as a proof of human is a trap and I am not aligned with that at all. The payment systems being used for that proof exclude millions if not billions of people.”
Jack’s criticism of Musk’s leadership at Twitter is coming after he had openly supported Musk in 2022 when he described him as the singular person he trusted to handle the company, also noting that had faith in him.
Jack tweeted in 2022, “In principle, I don’t believe anyone should run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving the problem of it being a company, however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness”.
In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.
— jack (@jack) April 26, 2022
Musk’s takeover of Twitter has however been followed with widespread criticism following the massive layoff of employees and the series of changes he has carried out on the platform.
Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter has culled half of its workforce and has gone back and forth on products and features, with several changes to its policies and regulations. Meanwhile, Musk during a G20 summit in 2022, while addressing the criticism he has constantly received, disclosed that there is no way he can please everyone.
Since he completed his acquisition of Twitter and took the company private on 27 October 2022, there has been widespread speculation as to the platform’s potential fate. Many observers have focused on a purported exodus of advertisers, while other pundits have forecast that users will abandon the platform in droves in 2023.
It is worth noting that despite Twitter’s widespread popularity and influence, the company only became profitable for the first time in 2018 when it reported its first-ever net income of $1.2 billion for that year. This was followed by a second consecutive year of profitability in 2019, with total revenue of $3.4 billion and a net income of $1.4 billion, which was higher than expected by many analysts, and oon afterward, it went back to reporting losses
Before these two years of profitability, Twitter had had mostly negative financial results as it struggled to monetize its large user base. This was what spurred Musk to let go of a significant number of its employees, as well as the introduction of strategies to cut costs to generate profit. The Tesla billionaire has visibly been working tirelessly to increase Twitter revenue.
Analysts believe that the platform could once again become a big moneymaker with some restructuring, reorganization of resources, and strategic interventions deemed necessary by Musk. Elon Musk is aiming to increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028.
Among his other goals, he expects the social media company to bring in $15 million from a payments business in 2023 that will grow to about $1.3 billion by 2028. He also expects Twitter to have 11,072 employees by 2025, up from around 7,500.