Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Elon Musk has begun a comprehensive overhaul of the company since acquiring social media Twitter at the end of October last year, which has also attracted a lot of criticism. But it is undeniable that Musk's approach has had a huge impact on other social media platforms.

From cutting costs to offering paid certification services, these CEOs have been documenting and imitating some of Musk's strategies.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman recently acknowledged Musk's influence. He said in an interview last week that Musk had shown how a social media app could be profitable without needing to be as big as Instagram. Specifically, it means cutting operating costs without any justification.

"He influenced us," Hoffman said. But for people who don't work at companies like Reddit, the impact may not be obvious. "We talked a few times, almost always about this topic, about work, about Internet platforms," he said. "

Musk has fired more than half of Twitter's employees since November, citing the company's need to cut costs and focus on rapid change. Reddit also announced this month that it would lay off about 5 percent of its workforce.

Reddit isn't the only company following Musk's lead. Other apps that compete more or less with Twitter have tried Musk's move. This shows that although Musk has just entered the social media field, he has already left a mark on the industry.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, a business software company, said earlier this year: "Every CEO in Silicon Valley has seen what Musk has done and asked themselves,'Do they need to unleash their inner Elon? '"

Benioff considered buying Twitter before Musk. Like Musk, he has been laying off employees. Salesforce announced in January that it would lay off 10 percent of its workforce.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said recently that Musk has made other tech executives more aggressive in cutting jobs and restructuring their companies.

A lot of the specific initiatives he's pushing are basically based on these principles: trying to make the organizational structure more technical; reducing the distance between the company's engineers and him; reducing the hierarchy of management,"zuckerberg said in an interview. I think these are generally good changes. "

"I also think the changes he's made could be good for the industry," Zuckerberg said. Because my feeling is that there are a lot of other people who think these changes are good, but they may be a little hesitant to do it. "

Without Musk's example on Twitter, it's hard to say how many layoffs there would be in the tech industry. Before and after Musk bought Twitter, there were waves of layoffs across the tech industry.

Zuckerberg and Musk have long had personal conflicts and competition at work. Recently, the two sides have even made an appointment, which has aroused heated discussion among netizens around the world. Musk got himself thinking about more than just cutting costs, he said.

"Of course, his behavior made me and a lot of people in the industry think,'Hey, are we doing enough? Can we make our company better by implementing these principles? '"

Meta is expected to launch a new app in the near future that competes directly with Twitter in the text-based social media space. This either indicates a perceived weakness in Twitter or the enormous impact of Musk's $44 billion investment in social media.

Musk took over Twitter with a strong management approach, ignoring employee demands, which many CEOs praised. But now, admiration for Musk's personality has shifted to imitation of his specific actions.

Musk may also have an impact on other social media platforms by experimenting more with non-advertising revenue sources, including various paid businesses and subscription services.

In February, Twitter announced that it would no longer provide free access to the platform's application programming interface (API). When Twitter launched its paid access plan, some people were reportedly shocked by the $42,000 monthly price tag. TechCrunch, a technology news site, said it "appears to be a money grab."

A few weeks later, Reddit followed suit with its own API pricing plan. Despite user protests that disrupted Reddit operations this month, Hoffman has stuck with the payment plan.

Although both companies have rolled out paid API programs back and forth, Reddit spokesman Tim Rathschmidt said Twitter's plans have had no impact on Reddit.

There is also a monthly subscription service for regular users. It's an idea Musk realized with his $8-a-month Twitter Blue V certification. Twitter Blue V authentication lets user accounts display blue authentication badges and ranks accounts and tweets higher.

Meta's Zuckerberg has been thinking about offering paid subscriptions for years, but hasn't pushed the idea, arguing that advertising is better.

In 2018, Zuckerberg testified before Congress: "We believe that ad-supported services for people are most consistent with our mission of trying to connect everyone in the world because we want to provide free services that everyone can afford." "

But after Musk continued to push Twitter's Blue V authentication service, Zuckerberg changed tack. In February, Zuckerberg announced a paid authentication service called Meta Verified, which starts at $11.99 per month. Similar to Twitter Blue V authentication, Meta Verified provides badges that increase the visibility and influence of user accounts.

Musk's continued influence is surprising for at least one other reason. By all accounts, Twitter is much smaller as a business than it was when Musk acquired it, which is clearly the opposite of what a CEO typically aims for. This month it was reported that Twitter ad revenue fell 59% year-over-year in the last five weeks.

Some columnists argue that Musk's failure to pay some of the company's bills even puts Twitter in danger of being filed for involuntary bankruptcy by creditors, a scenario that other tech CEOs must be reluctant to emulate.

While questions have been raised about Musk's overall impact on Twitter's finances, his most controversial behavior may have been about the platform's review mechanism.

Every social media platform has a set of rules that dictate what people shouldn't post. Musk has repealed some of the rules that Twitter's early management had laid down. The question is whether tech CEOs will follow Musk's radical example.

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