Twitter is asking some laid-off employees to return

In the takeover chaos, some are said to have accidentally been dismissed. Also: Twitter sales collapse after Musk takeover and Meta is also planning layoffs.

Good morning! Even during the weekend, work in the digital scene continued in many places.

The top topics:

That Twitter-Leadership team around Elon Musk should, according to media reports, ask the first laid-off employees to return to work. Several dozen professionals are said to have received such a message. In the chaos of the wave of layoffs after the takeover – the new Twitter boss fired 50 percent of Twitter employees last week – some appear to have been “accidentally” fired. Others were fired before management realized that their work and experience are essential to the smooth running of the platform, or that they are needed to develop the new features Musk wants.

At the same time, Musk justified the layoffs Twitter: The platform was losing $4 million a day, he wrote. All those who were made redundant would receive a three-month salary as severance pay. Nevertheless, Twitter is already being sued by former employees after the wave of layoffs. The class action lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco by five current or former Twitter employees, including Emmanuel Cornet, a software engineer known for his satirical cartoons criticizing Silicon Valley. He is said to have been fired on Tuesday. [Mehr bei Bloomberg, Handelsblatt, CNBC, The Verge und Handelsblatt]

on Founder scene: It’s finally here, this 49-Euro-Ticket: Starting next year, citizens in Germany will be able to travel throughout Germany with one ticket. As often and as long as you want. A revolution for our author Don Dahlmann, especially in view of the tariff jungle. Now, however, a solution for the EU must be found quickly. Dahlmann writes in his torque column what that could look like. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

And here are the other headlines of the night and the past few days:

The turnover of Twitter has “slumped massively” as advertisers stopped spending on the social media platform. wrote this Elon Muskthe new owner of the short message service, on Friday Twitter, but without giving more precise figures. Among the companies pausing their advertising are the car companies VW, General Motors and Audibut also the food company General Mills. In his Friday tweet, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter “Activist groups pressuring advertisers”. He said Twitter hasn’t changed its content moderation strategy, adding the company has “done everything we could to appease the activists.” The $8 subscription also launched over the weekend, giving each user the option of a blue verification tick. [Mehr bei CNBC, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian und Handelsblatt]

Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) plans to start large-scale layoffs this week, according to a media report. It was previously known that Apple imposed a hiring freeze on non-research and development jobs back in October. Apple apparently expects sales growth to slow during the holiday season. Meta and Apple are not the only companies making savings: in the past week alone, Twitter also Lyft, Stripe and Chime started with layoffs while Amazon announced a hiring freeze for employees. [Mehr bei Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg und The Information]

Die Teslastock has been – since CEO Elon Musk made his takeover bid for Twitter announced – fell by more than 35 percent. For comparison, the Nasdaq Composite is down about 18 percent over the same period. Musk first announced on April 25, 2022 that he had agreed to purchase Twitter. Tesla shares closed at $332.67 on the day. They were down to just $207.47 on Friday, a week after the Twitter acquisition completed. [Mehr bei CNBC]

Paypal has lowered its full-year sales forecast and warned of a rather gloomy Christmas quarter. The California payment service provider explained this by saying that inflation had affected the purchasing power of consumers, who were also struggling with an impending recession. “Consumers have switched from expensive, high-end brands to more affordable brands,” Moshe Katri, an analyst at Wedbush, told Reuters. Also Twiliothe maker of cloud communications software, gave a weak revenue outlook when it released its quarterly results. [Mehr bei Reuters und CNBC]

Binance has processed $8 billion worth of Iranian transactions since 2018, blockchain data shows. The crypto exchange made the trades despite US sanctions aimed at cutting Iran off from the global financial system. Almost all funds flowed between Binance and Iran’s largest crypto exchange Nobitex. Nobitex provides instructions on how to circumvent sanctions on its website. [Mehr bei Reuters]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: Strong brand or rather an innovative product? The Founder and Advisor Tobias Gross has written a book with a step-by-step guide for food startups. This is how food founders find their strategy. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

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Have a good start into the week!

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