Social media and its various forms:
Social media is an internet-based form of communication, that allows users to have conversations, share information, and create web content. There are many forms of social media which include, blogging, social network sites, photo-sharing sites, video-sharing sites, instant messaging, podcasts, and more. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are some of the many. On a personal level, social media helps us to stay connected with friends and families. On a professional level, it helps to learn something new and also to build our professional network by connecting with other professionals in this industry. At the company level, it helps to have conversations with clients and customers to get feedback from them, as a consequence of elevating the brand’s standard, one of such strongest social media platforms is Twitter. It is well-known for the activity of sharing the News, thoughts, and current events which are running around the world.
Usage of Twitter on people’s Needs:
Various sectors of people use Twitter in many ways, some of them are there for newsfeeds, by following prominent people and businesses; others for breaking news in real-time global happenings such as disasters and crises; some for their profession by having real-time conversations with clients and customers; and some for their business to know the current update of their worthwhile such as economy, rise and fall of shares. It is a valuable and strategic tool to participate in local and global conversations. Some terminologies of Twitter help us to access this platform easily. They are as follows:
1. Followers: “following” refers to subscribing a specific Twitter account from another account . To start following an account click the follow button next to the user name on their profile page to see their tweets as soon as they post something new.
2. Mention: “mention” refers to including the “@” sign before username in a tweet.
3. Tweets & Retweets: When the user posts something on his account is “Tweet”. When one user reposts something from another user, it is a “Retweet”, which mostly occurs during conversations.
4. Hashtag: “hashtags” refers to placing # symbol words. It is useful in finding the same or relevant topics that the user is searching for.
Evolution of Twitter:
Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass joined together to form Twitter in 2006. At the start, it shared daily status updates with friends and acquaintances. Progressively Twitter has become a publicity tool, those who can use it with full potential can create a decent amount of engaged followers. Journalists used twitter to break news and promote their articles, blogs, opinion, and political-related influences. Then, Tweets linked images and videos followed by Animated GIFs. In 2017 the character limit was increased from 140-280 to have longer tweets. In October 2017, Twitter appointed Parag Agrawal as Chief Technology Officer. On November 29, 2021, Jack announced his resignation as CEO of Twitter, such that Agrawal was proclaimed CEO of Twitter from November 2021 to October 2022. Parag Agrawal was fired as CEO, once Elon Musk did his acquisition of the company on October 27, 2022.
Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk
Initially, Musk sought one of the head positions of the company Twitter Inc Board of Directors by buying the shares of the company. But the board created a “poison pill” to defend the company’s acquisition by Musk. But musk had other ideas to proceed with it. Musk made an unsolicited offer to buy Twitter. Inc for $ 44 billion, and he turned the tables. Once Musk obtained overall ownership, he implemented many changes in Twitter, the prime changes are as follows:
1. Paid Verification: First big announcement of Musk once he became a CEO was his paid verification plan. This plan is all about paying $8 per month to get a blue checkmark on the account, simply saying “Pay and get verified”. Add on to that, once the user paid for the verification, he can put longer videos, and topics in the priority listing of replies, and advertisements for the user will be negligible.
2. Massive layoff: Out of 7500 strong workforces merely half of the strength has been cut off. To spread false accusations, teams like content moderation are there to maintain stability. But they were layoff due to Musk’s decision on cost-cutting.
3. Content moderation and account reinstatement plans: Musk has promised there will be no changes in content policies of banned accounts such as Donald Trump until a new content moderation council is formed. This is mainly launched to maintain decentralization in the platform.
4. Placating advertisers: As the site becomes a hotbed of hate speech, most of the advertisers suspend advertising on Twitter, mainly car firms like Audi, and General Motors. But he was keen to prevent this by giving shares of the company’s revenue to advertisers.
5. Charging for video content: Musk repeatedly considered charging for video content. The future would involve letting people post videos and charging users to see them, from that Twitter could get a certain space for revenue