Twitter owner and Chief Twit Elon Musk says that people should expect the company to "do lots of dumb things in the coming months." The admission comes in the middle of a stalled rollout of a refreshed Twitter Blue feature and ongoing concerns among ad buyers.
With Twitter working to test new features out under Musk's stewardship, the CEO took to Twitter to say that the company will keep what works and change what doesn't as he suggested that more live testing of new features should be expected.
Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.November 9, 2022
What Musk has in mind isn't clear, but it looks like he intends to test new features in public, rolling them out as soon as possible to see how they work. That's contrary to how many companies handle rollouts of new features, but it does have its benefits — an immediate and huge number of beta testers are very likely to find issues more quickly, for example.
Musk is currently under pressure after allowing people to pay $7.99 per month to become verified, a change that has led to multiple fake accounts claiming to be anything from Nintendo of America to Musk himself. Things got so bad that Musk tweeted to say that any account that impersonates another without clearly labeling itself as a parody would be banned for good.
However, that doesn't seem to have stopped anyone from actually doing it. The influx of fake verified accounts has led advertisers to question whether they want to risk their ads being displayed alongside fake tweets, with Musk holding an open Twitter Space yesterday in an attempt to address concerns.
With the call full of potential advertisers and iMore listening in, Musk gave the impression of a man with no clear plan for what he would say or how he would seek to calm the fears of the very companies that pay the ad dollars Twitter so clearly needs.
Musk last week fired around half of the company, amounting to approximately 37000 people, claiming that Twitter was losing $4 million per day. He was later forced to backtrack and ask some people to return to work after discovering that some of those fired would be integral to building some of the features he wants Twitter to offer in the future.
