As Elon Musk announces the rebranding of Twitter to ‘X’ on Sunday, soon, Esther Crawford, Musk’s former lieutenant at Twitter takes a jab by tweeting “Corporate seppuku: destroying your own product or brand,”
Seppuku is an ancient form of ritualistic suicide in Japanese culture. The process involves stabbing oneself in the stomach with a sword and could be voluntary or obligatory, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which says that the process was used often by warriors who had been defeated in battle and “chose to avoid the dishonor of falling into the hands of the enemy. Crawford included a sketch of a warrior appearing to follow the ritual in her post.
According to Business Insider, Crawford and a spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.
“Usually committed by new management in pursuit of cost-savings due to a lack of understanding about the core business or disregard for the customer experience,” Crawford added in her tweet, most probably referencing the thousands of Twitter staffers Musk fired shortly after taking the social-media app private last year. The billionaire has cut the company’s workforce in half since taking over.
“The result is a massive loss of shareholder value,” Crawford concluded her tweet.
Crawford was chief executive of Twitter payments and in charge of the paid Blue subscription service until she was laid off in February. She went viral in November 2022 amid Twitter’s massive layoffs when an employee named Evan Jones shared Crawford’s picture in which she was sleeping on the floor at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco after working overtime.
Esther Crawford worked for over two years at Twitter after the social media giant acquired her startup named ‘Squad’ in December 2020. According to various reports, Crawford is taking a break from her career after getting laid off by Elon Musk.
