Local Twitter boss insists it isn’t shutting in Australia
Despite reports this week that Twitter is ending its physical presence in Australia following a tumultuous end to 2022, local boss Angus Keene has insisted his team is carrying on.
According to industry sources, an email was sent by Keene to agency staff in response to an article earlier in the week by The Sydney Morning Herald, that reported Twitter is in the process of ending its “physical presence in Australia”.
In the article titled ‘Twitter begins to axe remaining Australian staff’, industry sources said that Twitter “had closed its local office”.
However, according to Twitter, staff are working from home in Australia after the company stopped leasing its Sydney CBD office.
Twitter boss Keene says it isn’t shutting locally
Keene said he wanted to offer reassurance that the Twitter team remains in Australia, and is committed to its partnership with agencies and their clients.
Keene did not respond to further questions when approached by Mumbrella.
Further, Keene said there have been no changes to the content and sales teams in 2023, having the full support of its cross-functional teams across the region and globally.
It’s understood there are 16 senior staff remaining locally.
Conversely, several media agency executives told Mumbrella they have not heard from the social media platform “in months”, with the last correspondence to notify them of major cuts in the second half of 2022.
Twitter was purchased by billionaire and Tesla co-founder, Elon Musk in 2022, and subsequently saw significant cuts across its global teams, with staff in Twitter Australia’s communications, marketing, government relations and news content teams all being laid off, barring a few exceptions.
Musk also reinstated several controversial figures to the website, with many advertisers turning away from what was deemed an unsafe environment for brands.
Keene was officially promoted into the managing director role for the platform’s operations in Australia and New Zealand last year after almost a year as its acting boss.
A report in The New York Times this week reports that Twitter has “considered selling user names to generate new revenue as its owner, Elon Musk, tries to resuscitate the company’s business, two people with knowledge of the plan said”.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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