Elon Musk outlined preparations for a new Twitter CEO but did not specify who it will be. Musk announced on Thursday that he has “hired a new CEO for X/Twitter” and that “she will start in 6 weeks.”
Musk will instead serve as Twitter’s executive chair and chief technology officer, “overseeing product, software, and sysops.”
While Musk will soon step down as CEO, he retains ownership of the firm, which he has called “X.” Giving someone else a specific title does not appear to make Twitter any less of a wild ride. Musk was dubbed “Chief Twit” after completing his acquisition of the company, which was followed by the rapid dismissal of huge chunks of its management team and thousands of other employees.
Another question is how Musk’s divided attention has impacted his other businesses (Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company – did we miss any?) and how it may impact them in the future. Tesla investors openly demanded Musk hand over control of Twitter in December, as the car company’s stock price fell to $101, less than a third of its top price over the previous year, which was roughly $314. In what some are calling an EV price war, Tesla has lowered vehicle costs and is facing weaker margins as it faces more competition than ever before.
As Musk has modified Twitter rules, presumably to suit his personal whims, curiosity has grown over how long his employment will endure — and how much of an impact it will have on his other businesses. Changes under Musk’s tenure have also strained Twitter’s ties with users, public safety agencies, and others.
Related: Tesla Defense Lawyers Say Elon Musk’s Claims Could Be “Deepfakes”
Musk’s takeover of Twitter had an impact on the platform’s advertising revenue. Several large advertisers halted spending on Twitter due to concerns that Musk’s beliefs on free speech would harm their reputation, and a flood of phony verified accounts that arose on the network following the initial debut of Musk’s revised Twitter Blue didn’t help either.
Musk eventually launched a more expensive Twitter Blue subscription, removed old “legacy” verified checkmarks for users with fewer than a million followers, and introduced a UI redesign in which users swipe between an algorithmically sorted, recommendations-based For You timeline and a chronological Following one. He also made encrypted DMs available only to verified users.
Musk hinted at the CEO shift in a December poll, asking followers if he should “step down as head of Twitter,” promising to heed the crowd’s (and possibly, bots’) desires.
The vote came after Musk issued a widely panned policy change that appeared to prohibit providing connections to rival social networking sites. Musk then clarified and then reversed the rule, pledging that big policy changes will be subject to a vote in the future – not the first time he pledged that decisions at Twitter would be determined by committee. A few minutes later, he tweeted a poll regarding stepping down, which drew approximately 17.5 million replies, with 57.5 percent of those polled agreeing that he should no longer be Twitter’s CEO.
The survey was far from the first sign that Musk will eventually appoint someone else to run Twitter’s day-to-day operations. In November, while testifying in court concerning his remuneration as Tesla’s CEO, he stated, “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” which corroborated earlier claims that his tenure as CEO was intended to be transitory from the outset.
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