Twitter, after laying off roughly half the company on Friday following Elon Musk’s $US44 billion ($68 billion) acquisition, is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return.

Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves. Others were let go before management realised that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Mr Musk envisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.

Twitter cut close to 3700 people via email last week as a way to trim costs following Mr Musk’s acquisition, which closed last month. Many employees learnt they had lost their job after their access to company-wide systems, such as email and Slack, were suddenly suspended. The requests for employees to return demonstrate how rushed and chaotic the process was.

Another of Mr Musk’s key early goals – adding verification checks for members of its monthly subscription service – is being delayed until Wednesday (Thursday AEST) to avoid potential chaos during the US midterm elections.

The whiplash events, as described by people familiar with the situation or in an internal company memo posted on Slack, follow Mr Musk’s acknowledgment that the company he and well-heeled partners bought for $US44 billion is losing $US4 million a day.

A Twitter spokesman did not reply to a request for comment.

Twitter has several thousand employees remaining, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr Musk is pushing those who remain at the company to move quickly in shipping new features, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to meet new deadlines.

Twitter has said it’s rolling out new features to its Twitter Blue subscription plan, offering a verification check mark for any user who pays the monthly fee. The company also said it would soon launch other features, including half the ads, the ability to post longer videos, and to gain priority ranking in replies, mentions and searches.

Twitter will issue the new blue verification check marks to users who pay $US7.99 a month for the service, starting on Wednesday. The company had previously planned to roll out the subscription feature on Monday – the day before the US midterm elections.

Twitter received internal and external feedback that the verification process for its Twitter Blue program could be ripe for abuse, according to one of the people. That raised concerns that candidates and other political actors might be impersonated on the site in the days before the elections.

Late on Sunday, Mr Musk said Twitter would ban accounts that impersonate others, after several high-profile users changed their names and pictures to match the billionaire. Any name change at all will cause a temporary loss of a verified check mark.