Twitter lays off more people, including Blue head Esther Crawford

Twitter laid off more than 50 people last Saturday in what seems to be the company's latest round of job cuts ever since business mogul Elon Musk took over last year. According to The Information, this hit multiple engineering teams, including those supporting the main Twitter app, technical infrastructure to keep Twitter's systems running, and advertising technology.

Notably, Twitter product manager Esther Crawford has also been laid off from the company, says Zoë Schiffer of Platformer. Crawford spearheaded various projects on Twitter, such as the company's planned payments platform and the Blue subscription service that allowed anyone with $8 to get their own verification badge. She was also one of the people behind the "Official" label that Twitter launched back in November of last year as a way to distinguish between Blue subscribers with checkmarks and accounts that are verified as official.

Crawford was also one of the most noteworthy people under Musk's leadership. Evan Jones, one of her former colleagues, tweeted a photo of her on the floor with a sleeping bag and eye mask. Crawford acknowledged the tweet, saying that "When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork."

Martijn de Kuijper, the founder of the defunct Revue newsletter platform that Twitter acquired in 2021, was also given the pink slip.

Musk recently said in an interview that he wants to stabilize Twitter, make sure the company is in a financially healthy place, and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out. Once he does, he says he will be able to choose his successor and finally step down as CEO of Twitter.

Source: The Information, Zoe Schiffer