Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk on Wednesday took a jibe at his critics who have been suggesting that the social media platform won’t be able to survive under the billionaire’s leadership. “Wasn’t Twitter supposed to die by now or something…?” Musk tweeted this morning.

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This comes just days after #RIPTwitter was trending on the microblogging site after hundreds of its employees resigned when Musk gave them an ultimatum to either commit to a ‘hardcore’ work environment or leave-taking home three months’ severance.

Wasn’t Twitter supposed to die by now or something … ?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

As nearly 1,200 employees reportedly left Twitter, people shared scores of memes and pointed out that the platform might soon shut down. Soon after, Musk replied, “Twitter is ALIVE.”

One of Twitter’s former employees earlier told The Guardian that the microblogging site stood a 50 percent chance of a major outage that could take the site offline during the ongoing FIFA World Cup.

The ex-employee who, as per the report, has knowledge of the workings of Twitter Command Centre said, “Between the lack of preparations and the lack of staffing, I think it’s going to be a rough World Cup for Twitter.”

He suggested that an incident of some kind – such as a service responding slowly or incorrectly – is almost a certainty during the 29-day competition in Qatar, estimating a 90 percent possibility of something going wrong that users would see.

The FIFA World Cup ends December 18 and so the verdict is still out on whether there will actually be lags and problems but on hitting out at his critics after day three of the competition, Musk went on to say in the latest tweet's thread, “Maybe we’ve gone to heaven/hell & don’t know it.”

In fact, on Tuesday, the billionaire posted a snapshot of weekly statistics according to which, Twitter's daily active users went up by 1.6 million last week, taking the total daily active users to another all-time high of 259.4 million. He added this will improve a lot as Twitter becomes fast to use outside of North America, Western Europe, and Japan.

Musk has been facing heat ever since he took over the firm in late October in a $44 billion deal. As soon as he joined, he laid off nearly half of the company’s 7,500-strong workforce.

The entrepreneur announced that the Blue Tick verification badge, which authenticates a user or organisation on Twitter, will be available for a monthly fee of $8 even as the launch has been put on hold for now.

His initial plan was delayed amid concerns that users could create fake accounts, posing as political leaders, lawmakers, news outlets, and organisations, and purchase the verified badge, thereby adding to the spread of misinformation.

Do check out our entire FIFA World Cup 2022 coverage by clicking the tab below.

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)

First Published:Nov 23, 2022 12:55 PM IST