Elon Musk tells Twitter staff platform should model itself on China’s WeChat

Tesla boss held all-hands meeting as he attempts to buy company for $44bn

Elon Musk has told Twitter employees that if the company wants to be more successful it should model itself on China’s WeChat app.

The entrepreneur made his comments as he addressed the social media platform’s staff amid his $44bn takeover of the San Francisco-based company.

Mr Musk, who is the world’s richest person, had his offer to buy the company accepted by the board in April, but has since cast doubt on if it will go through because amid claims that bot and fake account numbers are much higher than expected.

During the all-hands meeting on Thursday, Mr Musk, who does a lot of Tesla business in China, praised WeChat, which has more than 1.2bn users.

“You basically live on WeChat in China….if we can recreate that with Twitter we’ll be a great success,” he told the meeting, according to Alex Heath of The Verge.

The Tesla boss said that success for Twitter would be to go past the one billion daily users mark, reported CNBC.

Twitter said earlier this year in its Q1 earnings call that it had 229m daily active users.

He also addressed concerns about lay-offs at the tech company if his takeover goes through.

“It depends. The company does need to get healthy,” Mr Musk said, a source at the meeting told the news network. “Right now the costs exceed the revenue.”

But he told staff that “Anyone who is a signification contributor has nothing to worry about.”

And he emphasized to employees why he enjoyed using Twitter, on which he has 98.3m followers.

“I love Twitter”, he said. “I learn a lot from what I learn on Twitter.”

And he added: “Some people use their hair to express themselves, I use Twitter”

Mr Musk was also asked about remote working, which he has vocally criticised at Tesla, insisting staff who did not work 40 hours a week in the office would be fired.

“Tesla makes cars, and you can’t make cars remotely,” he told the Twitter staff and added that if “someone can only work remotely and they’re exceptional, it wouldn’t make sense to fire them.”