Elon Musk talks to Twitter staff about layoffs, space aliens in company call

Elon Musk had his first call with Twitter staff since he submitted his $44 billion proposal to buy the social media platform in April. On the call, he offered few concrete details about his plans for the company, apart from the declaration that some layoffs may be needed.

As reported by Reuters, Musk conducted the session via video call, and interacted with employees in an open-ended question-and-answer format, moderated by a Twitter staff member. Among other answers, Musk speculated about the existence of aliens and other space civilisations in his 10-minute appearance.

Musk said he believes Twitter needs to be a platform that aims to help "civilisation and consciousness", adding that he wants to increase the user count from 229 million to a billion people.

Additionally, despite making statements to the contrary in the past, he said that he believes that advertising is a strong revenue model for the company.

"I think advertising is very important for Twitter," Musk said. "I'm not against advertising. I would probably talk to the advertisers and say, like, 'hey, let's just make sure the ads are as entertaining as possible'."

When asked about the deadline for the finalisation of the deal and possible layoffs, Musk was a little more vague. He said he was still trying to learn more about the spam bot issue that has caused so much public friction, and that while certain layoffs were necessary to balance the books, important employees need not worry.

"Right now, the costs exceed the revenue," Musk said, adding "anyone who's ... a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about."

As Twitter personnel pressed the moderator to ask Musk about his remote work ideas for the employees, the billionaire reiterated the position he recently took at Tesla. He believed "strongly towards working in person, but if somebody is exceptional, then remote work can be okay".