Elon Musk is stepping down as CEO of Twitter, saying he plans to find someone else to run the company, though he will remain active building the site.
Key Details
- Elon Musk plans to step down as head of Twitter as he looks to find someone else to run the company.
- He took to Twitter with a poll saying, “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,” where 57.5% of voters said yes.
- Musk said the challenge is not finding a CEO but one who is good enough to keep the platform alive and running.
Why it’s news
In the two months Elon Musk has owned Twitter, he has made numerous changes to the platform to save it and possibly make it better, but iMusk has decided to focus on programming the site and lead the overall management to a hired hand.
Musk announced his plans to find a new CEO on Twitter after posting a poll asking if he should step down where the majority vote was yes.
“The question is not finding a CEO,” he wrote shortly after the poll started. “The question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”
Musk explained that Twitter was looking at a negative cash flow of about $3 billion next year, but over the last few months, he has cut many costs, so the company should be able to break even on cash flow next year, reports Bloomberg.
Twitter has many problems, and Musk has many businesses he runs, so the platform could be too much for him to handle right now, causing him to look for a new CEO.
His whole time at Twitter has made the future of the platform uncertain, and this does too. A new CEO could be exactly what the company needs or could set it back even further.
Musk hasn’t said if there are any candidates or when a new leader could possibly step in.
Musk’s Time with Twitter
Musk has made a large variety of changes to Twitter in the short amount of time that he has owned the company.
After the Twitter deal was finalized, Musk began immediately making his mark on the company by sending Tesla engineers to meet with Twitter product leaders to ensure everything was in place for his takeover.
He then fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. He also fired the entirety of the Twitter board and was named sole director of the company.
His next step—cutting 50% of Twitter’s remaining employees.
Not long after that, he decided to start charging for a verified blue check mark on the app, which stirred up a bit of controversy. The check mark was previously reserved for celebrities and other verified individuals, but now anyone willing to pay could receive one.
That plan backfired as many people impersonated celebrities and other famous figures resulting in Musk having to pause the program and the re-launching later on.
He then added a feature called Community Notes, previously known as Birdwatch, that adds notes submitted by Twitter users under a tweet to explain what is said in the tweet and if it is misleading.
Later, he added incentives for advertisers to bring more advertisers back to the platform.
In all, Musk made many changes to the platform to get it back on its feet, but in the end, it seems it was all too much for the company, and Musk is officially ready to throw in the towel.