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Musk Cuts Thousands of Contract Staff, Hints at Additional Verification Elements

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There Will be Ways to Generate More Revenue from Twitter, But $8 Verification Isn’t It

Seriously, every day Elon is throwing out new ideas for what’s coming next at Twitter, some of which probably will eventuate, and others that’ll get lost in the shuffle. And there’s certainly a lot of shuffling going on at Twitter HQ.

Here’s the Elon Musk/Twitter update for today:

More Job Cuts

Over the weekend, Musk’s transition team reportedly cut 4,400 of the company’s 5,500 contract staff.

Twitter users local contractors for various tasks, including content moderation and site management, but these are not employees, as such, so they were not included in the original staff cull, which saw Musk cut half of Twitter’s employees last week (before asking some of them to come back).

According to reports, many of these contractors were not told that their contracts would be canceled, they found out after finding that their access to Twitter’s systems had been shut off.

The impacts that these latest cuts will have isn’t clear, but it seems as though Twitter’s moderation, and even day-to-day upkeep, could start to deteriorate as a result.

Musk has been up-front about the need to cut costs, with Twitter, apparently, losing $4 million a day when he initially took over at the app. Job cuts will certainly address this, at least in part, but you would have to also expect that losing so many staff and contractors (now up to around 8k roles in total) will have to have some impact on the service.

If things start falling apart in the next few weeks, this could be why.

At the same time, Musk is now also engaging in public back-and-forth with former Twitter staff, who have questioned his claims about mismanagement at the company.

In summary, staff relations at Twitter are seemingly not going great at the moment.

Delayed Verification

As has been well documented, Elon’s $8 checkmark program has, this far, been pretty messy, leading to a range of impersonations, misrepresentations, and potentially defamation, amid confusion over the new blue ticks, and what they actually mean.

The ensuing chaos has even leading to major stock impacts for some big-name companies.

As a result, Twitter’s now taken a step back, with the new program removed from live deployment late last week. Musk has admitted that it ‘needs some tweaks’, but he does expect the $8 checkmarks to be made available again by the end of this week.

Though likely with one significant update:

So the new process, which is seemingly designed to address the aforementioned issues with impersonation, will enable Twitter to provide an official linkage between, say, a media organization and their actual staff in the app, with maybe a new variation of the ‘official’ gray tick, that will be displayed in addition to the blue checkmark.

How exactly that will work isn’t clear, but the idea is that this will provide more granularity to verification – so the blue checkmark is not viewed as a signal of authority, as such, but as a marker of verified identity in association with a brand.

In other words, imposters won’t so easily be able to dupe people with parody accounts, because they won’t have this extra seal of approval – whatever it may be – which would confirm that this is a representative of said organization.

Which makes some sense, but probably just sticking with the original blue tick system, and reviewing the guidelines for that, would have been easier.

But then, I guess, you wouldn’t be able to charge $8 to bring in some quick cash – and for context, 140,000 people reportedly signed up to the new $8 checkmark program in the days that it was available last week.

We’ll no doubt hear more about the next iteration of Twitter verification soon.

Twitter x LinkedIn

This is a more left-field option, but Elon Musk also says that people will soon be able to list their employment and education history on Twitter, expanding Twitter search into a whole new element.

Musk noted this in response to a user question about employment history and resumes, which Musk said would be ‘coming soon’ to the app.

That could add more credibility, or not, to what a user is saying. For example, if somebody’s commenting on climate change, and you check their Twitter resume and find that they have no history of climate research experience, maybe that lessens the value of their input.

Or maybe they just make it up. I don’t know, but it looks like Musk is trying to branch out into new areas, which may be aligned with his broader view of identity verification. Or it could be another opportunity to make money via job listings in the app.

——

Those are the big notes from Musk’s various comments and updates over the weekend, aside from his ongoing provocation of conflict between ‘the people’ and the ‘media elite’.

I’m not exactly sure where this stems from, as the negative coverage around Musk’s Twitter takeover thus far has related to staff cuts, and the way in which they were handled, verification changes, and the rushed nature of the new $8 checkmark program, and problems at the app, which Musk himself said just last week could go bankrupt at some stage.

It seems like those issues have all been reported pretty accurately, even if they’re not flattering to Musk. But maybe I’m missing something – or maybe, Musk just benefits from inciting class warfare that pits his supporters against his perceived enemies.



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How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]

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How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]

Are you looking for ways to improve your ChatGPT output? Want to train it to write in a more unique tone of voice, in order to better suit your branding?

The Creative Marketer shares his ChatGPT prompt tips in this infographic. To enact these, add “Write like [INSERT CHARACTER]” at the start of your ChatGPT instructions.

TCM breaks things down into the following categories:

  • Innocent
  • Sage
  • Explorer
  • Ruler
  • Creator
  • Caregiver
  • Lover
  • Hero
  • Everyman
  • Magician
  • Jester
  • Outlaw

Check out the infographic for more information.

A version of this post was first published on the Red Website Design blog.

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Elon Musk reinstates far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X

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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, by company owner Elon Musk

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, by company owner Elon Musk – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Joe Buglewicz

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, on Sunday reinstated far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the social media platform, a year after vowing never to let him return.

Jones, who claimed that a December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators was a hoax, was banned from the platform — then still known as Twitter — in 2018 for violating its “abusive behavior policy.”

He was also sued by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting and ordered by a judge in the case to pay up more than a billion dollars in damages last year.

Musk had himself promised never to let the Infowars host back on the social media platform, which he bought last year for $44 billion.

But following a poll Musk conducted on X asking whether Jones should be reinstated, to which some two million users responded, he flipped that decision.

“I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” the SpaceX founder said on X.

But Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action group which pushes for tighter gun laws, said that “defamation is not free speech.”

Musk’s decision comes the same week that the Sandy Hook families commemorate the 11th anniversary of the December 14 shooting, which Jones alleged was staged to allow the government to crack down on gun rights.

Jones’ followers harassed the bereaved families for years, accusing parents of murdered children of being “crisis actors” whose children had never existed.

It also came a week after Musk had responded to advertisers pulling out of X because of far-right posts and hate speech, including an apparent endorsement by Musk himself of an anti-Semitic tweet.

Asked whether he would respond to the advertising exodus, Musk said in an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the advertisers could “go f*** yourself.”

Jones, who has a million followers on X, returned to the site with his first post re-tweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, in which he hailed Jones’ “triumphant return”

US media reported that as of Sunday, the account of Jones’ controversial show Infowars was still banned.

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Instagram Launches New ‘Close Friends Only’ Podcast to Showcase Celebrity Users

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Instagram Launches New ‘Close Friends Only’ Podcast to Showcase Celebrity Users

Not sure if this will be a valuable addition, or another stream that’ll fade out pretty quick, as Meta stops paying attention to it.

Today, Instagram has launched a new podcast called “Close Friends Only”, which it says will present “the latest on culture – from memes and icks, to fashion and friendship – all from your favorite celebrities.

And they’ve gone big out of the gate, with the first episode featuring Ice Spice in conversation with Doja Cat.

The conversation sees the two stars discuss their favorite memes, their favorite animals, celebrity crushes, experiences in flirting on IG, their juiciest DMs, and more.

Which will no doubt get a heap of attention, and will help make Instagram a bigger focus for youngsters seeking to replicate their idols. But in terms of practical advice or tips, yeah, there might not be a heap there.

But it could be worth tuning in anyway, in order to get the lowdown on the latest trends, from some of the people that are leading the way on cultural shifts.

But then again, as noted, it’ll be interesting to see how IG follows this first episode up, and whether they keep running regular episodes of the podcast with more celebrities.

Either way, it’s an interesting promotional vehicle for IG, especially given that it’s focusing on musicians, as TikTok becomes an even more critical platform for music promotion.

Maybe, then, this will be Instagram’s counter to that, but again, we’ll have to wait and see whether more episodes arrive.

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