A Twitter bird sculpture fetched $100,000 on Wednesday when Elon Musk auctioned off furniture, decor, kitchen equipment and more from the tech firm’s downtown San Francisco headquarters.
Auction service Heritage Global Partners confirmed that the online auction of “Twitter’s Surplus Corporate Office Assets,” which lasted just over 24 hours, also featured a 10-foot neon light in the shape of Twitter’s bird logo, which made a winning bid of $40,000. .
Among the 631 lots are espresso machines, ergonomically correct desks, televisions, bicycle-powered charging stations, pizza ovens and a decorative planter shaped like an “@” sign.
Wild to see the Twitter office on auction. Board room tables, phone booths, chairs, monitors… even the Twitter bird statue. Great memories from a different era. https://t.co/kLOx69ZbeI pic.twitter.com/BFfvFy6Pg4
— Kevin Weil 🇺🇸 (@kevinweil) January 15, 2023
Musk said in December that drastic cost cuts at Twitter had fixed the company’s dire finances as he set out to find a new CEO for his troubled social media platform.
The mercurial billionaire told a live chat forum at the time that without the changes, which included laying off more than half of Twitter’s employees, the company would have lost $3 billion a year.
Musk said he was “cutting costs like crazy” on the platform he bought for $44 billion.
Just weeks after taking ownership of Twitter, Musk laid off nearly half of its 7,500-strong workforce, sparking concerns that the company may have content moderation and fear-mongering governments and advertisers to carry out. There was insufficient staff.
Musk said his strategy is to drastically reduce costs while increasing revenue, and that a new $8 subscription service called Twitter Blue will help with that goal.
Twitter under Musk has been in chaos, with mass layoffs, the return of banned accounts and the suspension of journalists critical of the South African-born billionaire.
Musk’s takeover also saw an increase in racist or hateful tweets, drawing scrutiny from regulators and a crackdown on big advertisers, Twitter’s main source of revenue.
