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Three Top Twitter Executives Quits As Elon Musk Takeover Looms
Twitter’s executive ranks continued to reduce as on Tuesday three senior managers quit the company following Elon Musk’s looming $44 billion takeover.
According to Bloomberg News, vice president of product management; Ilya Brown, vice president of Twitter Service; Katrina Lane, and the head of data science, Max Schmeiser, all handed in their resignations.
“We are thankful for all of their hard work and leadership,” a Twitter spokesperson told Bloomberg.
“We continue to be focused on providing the very best experience to the people on Twitter.”
The departures come less than a week after Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal ousted two top executives — Kayvon Beykpour, the company’s general manager, and Bruce Falck, Twitter’s head of revenue.
Jay Sullivan, the head of consumer product, will take over Beykpour’s position.
Beykpour tweeted on Thursday that “this wasn’t my decision” and that Agrawal “asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.”
Falck also tweeted that he was “fired” by Agrawal. That tweet was later deleted.
Agrawal cited the company’s failure to hit growth and revenue targets for the firings. He also announced that Twitter would be instituting a hiring freeze as well as budget cuts, but had no plans to lay off workers.
“Leaders will continue making changes to their organizations to improve efficiencies as needed,” Agrawal wrote in his note to employees.
Last month, Twitter’s board of directors accepted Musk’s $54.20 share buyout offer. But Musk in recent days has signaled that the deal could be off. He has expressed dissatisfaction with the presence of spam and bot accounts.
Musk is calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Twitter’s claims that less than 5% of its daily users are spam and bot accounts.
On Tuesday, he also posted a poll on the site, asking: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?”
The first option showed two hysterically laughing emoji faces while the second showed a robot next to the words “Who me?!”
When another Twitter user commented that the SEC should investigate whether Twitter’s claims are true, Musk responded: “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?”
Earlier on Tuesday, Twitter said it would not allow Musk to wriggle free from his $44 billion offer for the social media platform despite the multibillionaire’s threats to walk away if the company doesn’t prove it is sufficiently cracking down on spam and bot accounts.
The San Francisco-based company filed a statement with the SEC on Tuesday morning — hours after Musk tweeted that he may not proceed with the deal.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss has seen Twitter’s shares plunge by 30% since making his $54.20 offer on April 25, hovering at $38 on Tuesday.
