According to a report, Elon Musk has fired around 200 staff at Twitter, including the executive behind the revamp of its paid-for premium service, Esther Crawford. The job cuts represent about 10% of Twitter's workforce, which has been significantly reduced since Musk bought the company in October. The sacked employees included product managers, data scientists, and engineers responsible for the site's efficiency. Musk has identified growth in subscription revenue as a key target for Twitter, which had relied on advertising for most of its income before his takeover but has suffered a plunge in ad revenue due to issues such as impersonation.

Twitter Blue, the premium subscription service, was relaunched in December and reportedly has 180,000 subscribers in the US. Twitter has been historically loss-making and has struggled to generate the cash flow required to pay off the significant debts it inherited after Musk's $44bn takeover. The deal's financing included $13bn of debt that now sits on Twitter's balance sheet and costs more than $1bn a year to service. Musk sacked half of Twitter's workforce, about 3,750 people, within days of taking over the business, and hundreds more left weeks later after the Tesla CEO demanded that staff commit to being "hardcore" or leave.