It feels like it has been one disaster after another for Twitter since Elon Musk purchased the social-media platform last October. There was the back and forth between what was once an important way to verify the identity of Twitter users
He has also fired engineers for criticizing or correcting him on social media. He told employees to work hard, and when one female Twitter employee slept in the office in order to meet deadlines, he canned her. Nearly three months ago, Musk said that he valued Twitter at $20 billion, less than half the $44 billion he paid for the company.
But things have turned around according to the multi-billionaire. Bloomberg states that at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Friday, Musk told the 4,000 attendees that most regular Twitter users would agree that the site has improved and their experiences with Twitter have improved. He also said that Twitter was having a “corrosive effect” on society which is why he bought the company. “My hope was to change that and have it be positive for civilization,” he added.
Worried about the content on the site, advertisers dropped Twitter in droves with ad revenue declining by 50% since October. Musk said that he is confident that new Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino will be able to attract advertisers to Twitter. With the number of users at an all-time high, “almost all the advertisers have said they have either come back, or they will come back,” he said.
Part of the problem that Twitter faces in attracting companies willing to promote products and services on the platform is that Twitter has lost the two executives it counted on to moderate the site for tweets containing violence, pornography, and hate. Firms don’t want to advertise near and be linked to such content. Musk recently hired his new CEO, Yaccarino, from NBCUniversal in order to patch the relationship between Twitter and advertisers.
While Musk does get criticized in the media often, it is nice to see him in a self-deprecating mood. “If I’m so smart, why did I pay so much for Twitter?” he joked.
