Twitter tells Asia HQ staff to clear desks, WFH as Musk pares expenses

Workers at Twitter Inc.’s Singapore office were told to empty out their desks and vacate the premises, said people familiar with the situation, as Elon Musk continues to pare expenses around the globe.

Twitter staff were informed via email Wednesday that they had until 5 p.m. to leave the CapitaGreen building and resume their duties remotely from Thursday, one of the people said, asking not to be named discussing private information. Singapore-based staffers have now been reassigned as remote workers in Twitter’s internal system until further notice, the person added.

Singapore serves as Twitter’s Asia-Pacific headquarters, a region that was hit hard by deep and abrupt job cuts when new owner Musk took over the San Francisco-based firm. The company this month also let go of Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, who had been the head of site integrity for the region and a relatively recent hire.

Representatives for Twitter didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for CapitaLand, the owner of its Singapore offices, said Twitter remains a tenant at CapitaGreen without elaborating.

Musk’s cost-cutting efforts have included not paying rent on its global headquarters, and it was sued over that issue last month by the landlord of its San Francisco offices. Casey Newton of Platformer first tweeted about the Singapore office clearout, adding that the reason for it was failure to pay rent on the facility.

Twitter said to consider selling user names to boost revenue

A report by The New York Times revealed that  Twitter is planning to sell usernames through online auctions to boost revenue. Twitter Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has been looking for ways to generate revenue for the company. According to reports, the new revenue stream has been in discussion since last December. Musk had earlier tweeted that the micro—blogging platform would soon start freeing up 1.5 billion usernames or handles, noting that inactive accounts would be deleted.  Engineers have discussed running online auctions where people can bid for the user names, which are the words, numbers or string of characters that follow the @ sign by which accounts are identified on the platform. Mr. Musk’s user name, for example, is @elonmusk. It’s unclear if the project will move forward and if the plan affects all user names or only a subset, the people said. AGENCIES