Happy Nice Mall

SAN FRANCISCO — For weeks, elon musk Despite buying the company, he trashed Twitter in front of everyone. $44 billion deal. On Thursday, he finally acted like an owner.

In a one-hour question-and-answer session with Twitter’s nearly 8,000 employees in the morning—Mr. Musk spoke to them for the first time since he agreed to buy the social media company in April—the richest man in the world talked about his plans. for service. In an enthusiastic and at times rambunctious speech, he touched upon a variety of topics including growth, possible layoffs, anonymity, Chinese practices, the existence of alien lifeforms, and even the cosmic nature of Twitter.

“I want Twitter to contribute to a better, long-lived civilization in which we better understand the nature of reality,” Musk said at the meeting, which was broadcast live to Twitter staff and listened to by The New York Times.

The 50-year-old added that he hopes the service will help humanity “understand as much as possible the nature of the universe.”

The meeting, which Mr. Musk attended from his cell phone in what appeared to be a hotel room, suggested he was determined to close the blockbuster purchase. The billionaire, who also manages electric car maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, has been dubious over the past few weeks. repeatedly asked about Twitter’s fake accounts with the obvious pretext to potentially terminate or renegotiate the deal.

Since April, the famous variant Mr. Musk has stated that the acquisition is “on holdHe accused Twitter of “actively resisting and blocking” his rights. At another point, he criticized some of the company’s managers. He made his provocative comments as global markets fell. Tesla’s sharesThe main source of wealth has hit rock bottom.

Paying $54.20 per share to buy Twitter, Mr. Musk’s quirks left investors, company employees and others to speculate on what he could do. Twitter’s stock is currently trading around $37. Still, the company has insisted the deal is on track and is sharing information with long-time pursuer Mr. Musk. $1 billion separation fee if it goes away.

Mr Musk did not directly address whether he would close the deal with Twitter on Thursday, but made it clear to his employees that he has big ambitions.

During the talk, moderated by Leslie Berland, Twitter’s chief marketing officer, Mr. Musk said he hopes to expand the service to more than one billion users worldwide. That would be almost four times the number of current users. He added that he was hands-on at Tesla and expects it to be the same on Twitter.

Even with such a performance, some have warned that Mr. Musk could change his mind about closing the Twitter deal.

“I’m assuming it works in two channels,” said Ann Lipton, a corporate governance professor at Tulane Law School. “Maybe he wants to lower the price or even cancel the deal. If the deal goes through, it wants additional investors.”

Speaking publicly with Twitter employees, trying to address their concerns, can reassure potential investors. But I’m not sure if this is Plan B or Plan A.”

Twitter declined to comment on the meeting, and Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Musk was scheduled to speak to Twitter staff weeks ago, but the session did not take place. Then over the past week, the San Francisco-based company began collecting questions for him from its employees on its internal Slack messaging system. The meeting, which was scheduled to start at 9 a.m. San Francisco time, started a few minutes late, with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal thanking Mr.

Then Mr. Musk began answering questions, including remote work. This month, sent notes Telling workers at Tesla and SpaceX that he expects them to be in the office 40 hours a week. Twitter employees have largely worked remotely during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Musk told Twitter staff that he’s open to working remotely, given that software development is different from coming out to build cars every day. But he said he hopes a broad lack of in-office participation could contribute to a declining “esprit de corps” and that he hopes people will be more willing to enter the office in the future.

Mr Musk declined to respond directly on Twitter whether there would be a layoff, although his response was somewhat ominous.

“Currently, costs exceed revenues,” he said. “This is not a great situation.”

At another point, he plunged into a discussion about whether extraterrestrial life was possible, although it’s unclear where he was headed. He also brought up the Chinese apps WeChat and TikTok as inspirational, given that WeChat is so embedded in the daily lives of people in China and that TikTok is “not boring.”

One improvement Mr Musk said he wanted to make was adding payment technology to Twitter. Ideally, users will be able to send money back and forth through the service, similar to how products like Venmo or Square Cash work.

Mr. Musk, a long-time strong user of Twitter with more than 98 million followers, has long said he believes the company’s potential has not been adequately tapped. He added that he hopes to revive the service outside of the public markets by privatizing the company and making significant changes to the way Twitter operates.

Inside TwitterSome employees had mixed feelings about Mr. Musk. Some said they were concerned about his Twitter habits and dark politics.

On Thursday, SpaceX employees released a memo saying they were concerned about their general manager’s public behavior—specifically how he was behaving on Twitter—and that this was reflecting poorly on employees.

“Elon’s behavior in public is a source of frequent distraction and embarrassment to us,” the letter said. Obtained by The Times and previously reported by The Verge. “As our CEO and foremost spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX – every tweet Elon posts is a de facto public statement of the company.”

Others on Twitter said they were concerned about how Mr Musk wanted to take a laissez-faire approach to moderating the platform.

He stressed on Thursday that he wanted to make Twitter as inclusive as possible, mostly by gaining more users, adding that he would not allow criminal acts to take place on the network. He also said on Twitter that he doesn’t want people to use their real names, and that it is helpful to use pseudonyms to express political views on the service.

Citing Mr Musk’s reputation as an innovator, some Twitter staffers said they were heartened after Thursday’s meeting. Mr Musk was not hostile and seemed to have a vision for the product, although he could not articulate it at times, they said. Others, along with an employee in an internal Slack message viewed by The Times, said she didn’t respond to their questions: “If you have a drink every time you answer a question, you’ll end up painfully sober. This.”

When asked if he planned to take over the chief executive role at Twitter when Mr. Musk took over the company, he was neutral. He said he is not a traditional CEO and pointed to his title at Tesla, namely Technoking. But he also noted that he has many ideas for product updates and how the service should improve, and will report them to others within the company.

“I expect them to listen to me on this,” Musk said.

Ryan Mac and Lauren Hirsch contributing reporting.