Maheshwari, who was transferred from India to the US in August 2021 and left Twitter in December of that year, said Musk could eventually achieve the changes he wanted to bring about, but had expended significant time, money and energy to do so.

“Twitter is in a difficult position today. On the user side, Musk wants only human, verified subscribers and no bots, which is a complete change. On the business side, he wants to make the platform subscription-centric, which again is a big shift given that 90 percent of revenue is currently ad-centric. He also wants to focus on content creation, which won’t be easy,” Maheshwari said. In his opinion, the business model can only be successfully switched from advertising to subscriptions if at least 10 percent of all users decide to do so.

Musk has previously discussed charging $8 for the blue tick that verifies Twitter handles of individuals and organizations. What do users get after checkout, aside from the blue tick? Maheshwari said Musk wants to offer users premium content, which would require him to partner with major newspapers and other content-generating channels that make such content available to users for a fee. In addition, such users could also post longer videos, he said. As for the layoffs, he said they are likely to continue because Musk has centralized tech operations at headquarters in the US, requiring everyone who works in tech departments to move there and come into the office regularly. FE