As of October 27, 2023, it has been one year since Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, and since then, he has made changes to the fundamentals of the company.

Elon Musk initiated the acquisition of the social media company Twitter on April 14, 2022, and concluded it on October 27, 2022.

Less than a month into the purchase, Musk started laying off Twitter employees.

He revealed earlier this year, during an interview with BBC, that he had laid off roughly about 6,500, or 80% of the entire workforce of Twitter.

This means that only 1,500 of the around 8,000 Twitter employees are still employed at the company, and there are fewer than 600 engineers left.

Musk stated that firing a large number of employees was “one of the hardest” decisions and that it was “not fun at all” and can sometimes be “painful.”

Subsequently, his action resulted in improved productivity and profitability.

Musk renamed Twitter to X and replaced its iconic blue bird symbol with a white X logo on a black background in late July 2023.

This transformation was a method for Musk to create an application with offerings beyond social media.

He aimed for X to be “the everything app.”

In addition, the change in the logo was a symbol of X being Musk’s personal property.

While the exact meaning behind the new logo is unknown, it is unofficially said that X represents a transition into a new era, transformation, diverse ideas, and change.

Despite the changes being made, X is losing daily active users under Elon Musk.

After Musk’s purchase of Twitter, monthly users of X declined 15%, and advertising revenue has plunged down 54%.

Hence, X is struggling under a heavy debt load.

A quarter of all X users expressed their opinions that ‘they are not very or not at all likely to be on X a year from now.’

There could be several reasons for this downfall of X.

Musk transformed the core features of what made Twitter, Twitter, such as its name, blue bird logo, and its verification system.

He released ‘X Premium’, which is a premium subscription system paying for the blue tick on your account.

The blue tick used to indicate that the account is authentic and belonged to a notable individual, brand, or an organization.

X users tend to trust accounts with the blue verification; therefore, this led to numerous fraudulent accounts being made.

Furthermore, features such as long videos are misused, and sharing copyrighted and extremist content makes advertisers hesitant.

“Musk hasn’t managed to make a single meaningful improvement to the platform and is no closer to his vision of an ‘everything app’ than he was a year ago,” said Jasmine Enberg, a principal analyst for Insider Intelligence.

“Instead, X has driven away users, advertisers, and now it has lost its primary value proposition in the social media world: Being a central hub for news.”

On October 17, 2023, X said in a post on its website that it has started testing a new subscription system, “Not a Bot,” starting with two countries: New Zealand and the Philippines.

“Not a Bot” subscription plan will charge $1 annually to new users on X to unlock basic features such as tweet, retweet, like, reply, and bookmark.

New X users without the payment will only be able to read posts, watch videos and follow accounts.

Musk posted a tweet on October 18 saying, “but $1/year to write. It’s the only way to fight bots without blocking real users.”

The consequences of the new subscription method are yet to be found.

Chaemin Lee

Grade 10

Saint Paul Academy Daechi