Elon Musk and Twitter: Tesla boss is aiming for "at least one billion" users

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Elon Musk: Tesla boss and richest man in the world

Photo: ALY SONG / REUTERS

At a video conference with Twitter employees, US tech billionaire Elon Musk announced the goal of increasing the number of users of the online service.

Musk, who announced the takeover of Twitter for 44 billion dollars (41.7 billion euros) in April, was vague in the virtual question and answer session on Thursday with a view to possible job cuts.

He also gave no further information on the status of his takeover of the service.

He's aiming for "at least a billion people on Twitter," Musk said.

The Tesla boss raised the bar for the short message service: Twitter currently has around 229 million users.

With a view to the company's personnel development, Musk remained vague.

In his opinion, job cuts are necessary, said the richest man in the world according to Forbes at the video conference.

Just like an austerity plan: »At the moment the costs exceed the income.« But everyone who is relevant to the company has nothing to fear.

At the end of last year, Twitter had 7,500 employees.

Facebook comes to 45,000 for comparison.

Musk expressed a rather negative attitude to the question of the right to work from home.

According to US media reports, he told the workforce that only those who perform exceptionally could possibly work from home.

Musk did not comment on the status of his takeover of the service.

Musk has repeatedly stated that the multi-billion dollar takeover would depend on the number of spam or fake accounts in the short message service.

This involves so-called bots: computer programs that use algorithms to interact with users and pretend to be real people.

Lawsuit against Musk and his companies

Meanwhile, Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX have been sued by a US investor for losses sustained with the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

In the lawsuit filed in a New York court on Thursday, Keith Johnson accuses Musk and his companies of being part of an illegal Ponzi scheme that drove the Dogecoin price up and then crashed.

Johnson is seeking a class action lawsuit for anyone who lost money using Dogecoins.

The plaintiff accused Musk of presenting Dogecoin as a legitimate investment when it had no value.

He wants Musk and his companies to pay for three times all the alleged losses in value Dogecoin holders have suffered since 2019, putting the total at $258 billion.

In addition, the accused should bear the legal and procedural costs.

Whether and to what extent the lawsuit will be admitted remains to be seen.

Musk and his company have not yet commented on the allegations.

Dogecoin is a digital currency that has existed since 2013 and is based on the funny image of a Japanese dog that has become an internet phenomenon and which was actually supposed to be a joke.

Driven by celebrities like Musk, who is followed by a good 98 million user accounts on Twitter, it temporarily developed into one of the hottest speculative objects on the financial market in 2021 and reached a record high of 74 cents in May.

Most recently it was only worth around 5 cents.

bbr/dpa/AFP/REuters