Dozens of Twitter staff throughout gross sales and engineering departments had been laid off final week, together with certainly one of Musk’s direct stories who was managing engineering for Twitter’s adverts enterprise, in keeping with firm sources and social media posts from affected staff seen by The Verge. This implies Musk has performed at the very least three rounds of layoffs since his promise to cease doing them in November. In the meantime, he has given a directive internally to revamp how adverts are focused in Twitter’s most important feed inside every week — a part of his plan to repair what he has publically called “the worst advert relevance on Earth.” (The Info first reported that recent cuts hit the gross sales staff final week.)
Musk’s plan is to vary Twitter’s advert concentrating on to work like Google’s search adverts, which goal primarily by key phrases which might be looked for, fairly than a consumer’s exercise and profile information. It’s an method that works nicely for a search engine — the place individuals go to precise particular intent for locating one thing — and has helped Google construct one of the vital worthwhile companies of all time. Nevertheless it hasn’t labored for a social media enterprise up to now.
In a tweet on Saturday, Marcin Kadluczka, the laid-off engineering supervisor for monetization who reported on to Musk, hinted on the infeasibility of the one-week deadline in a tweet: “I imagine Twitter can actually enhance adverts in 2-3 months (no essentially in every week although).” I’ve confirmed that Musk gave the aggressive deadline simply earlier than Kadluczka and others within the adverts, shopper, and gross sales orgs had been laid off final Friday.
Right here is the place I’ll caveat that Musk gave the same deadline to revamp Twitter Blue when he first purchased the corporate that wasn’t met. He might additionally change his thoughts about how adverts ought to work on Twitter. He didn’t reply to an e mail asking for remark.
Bettering Twitter’s adverts has been a key focus of Musk’s since he purchased the corporate. He has appropriately identified that Twitter’s adverts are much less personalised and efficient than its opponents. (As my colleague Nilay Patel likes to say, critiquing the Musk period of Twitter is on no account an endorsement of the earlier regime.) Nevertheless it’s unclear if altering concentrating on to be keyword-driven like Google adverts will really enhance the standard of Twitter’s promoting, as others with a greater understanding of the trade-offs than me have identified: