Twitter bird statue sells for $100,000 as Elon Musk auctions office items

Hundreds of items from the social media platform's headquarters in San Francisco were sold

The Twitter logo outside its headquarters in San Francisco, California. AFP

A bird logo statue from Twitter's San Francisco headquarters has sold for $100,000 in an auction held by the company.

The auction was held by Heritage Global Partners and featured furniture, decorations, kitchen equipment, electronics and more, with in excess of 600 items up for sale.

A 3m neon light in the shape of Twitter's bird logo brought in a winning bid of $40,000, Heritage Global Partners auction service said.

An planter in the shape of an @ symbol sold for about $15,000 while a wooden conference table brought in more than $10,000 and a high-end La Marzocco Strada 3 espresso machine fetched more than $13,000.

Some social media users claimed that items were selling for more than their street value.

The auction was held amid cost-cutting efforts by the company's new owner Elon Musk.

He cut thousands of jobs after acquiring the social media platform in October for $44 billion, and said that it was losing $4 million a day.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Mr Musk said in a tweet on November 4.

Mr Musk launched a new subscription service, Twitter Blue, to bring in more revenue.

The service allows subscribers to edit tweets, upload 1080p videos and receive a blue tick account verification.

Twitter said on Wednesday it would price Twitter Blue subscription for Android at $11 per month - the same as for iOS subscribers - while offering a cheaper annual plan for web users when compared to monthly charges.

Mr Musk later tweeted that a "higher-priced subscription that allows zero adverts" will be introduced.

Another method to raise revenue that has been under consideration is to put popular usernames up for auction, the New York Times reported last week.

It is not known how much certain handles may be worth if they match those of famous brands or people.

Mr Musk has previously said that Twitter was preparing to delete 1.5 billion inactive accounts to free up dormant handles or usernames.

Mr Musk said last month that he would resign as chief executive of the microblogging platform once he found someone “foolish enough to take the job”.

The billionaire made the announcement on the social media platform after promising to abide by the result of a 12-hour Twitter poll.