On Dec. 20, tech mogul Elon Musk said that he would step down as Twitter’s chief executive officer after identifying a replacement, however will still be intimately involved in the platform’s operations.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk Tweeted, adding that, “I will just run the software & servers teams.”
His announcement follows a Twitter poll, published by Musk, that asked users to vote on whether or not he should step down as CEO of Twitter. After attracting around 17.5 million responses the results indicated that 57.5 percent of respondents agreed he should vacate the role. Musk promised to abide by the results of the poll.
The market appeared to immediately react to the news with Tesla Inc shares rising by around one percent on Wednesday after shedding nearly 60 percent of its value since Musk made his initial offer to purchase the platform in April this year.
Musk’s multi-billion dollar takeover of the platform has yielded mixed results and controversy. While Tesla Inc investors question if he’s too distracted by Twitter to properly run the automaker, Twitter users have rejoiced over Musk’s radical transparency.
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Musk has provided a number of independent, well established, journalists access to documents revealing the inner-workings of Twitter prior to his takeover. In a series of Twitter threads, journalists including Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss, revealed startling evidence that American political parties, primarily the Democrats, were involved in censoring Americans and what they saw as problematic news stories on the platform; most notably the Hunter Biden laptop article published by the New York Post just prior to the 2020 presidential election.
Among the revelations is also evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was significantly involved in what was allowed to be posted on the platform and that Twitter’s top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI employees.
Despite the earth shattering revelations, much of the established media has failed to report on the Twitter Files.
In a Wednesday Twitter Spaces audio chat, Musk said Twitter was on track to be “roughly cash flow break-even” next year. However, he has also warned that Twitter could end up bankrupt as early as May 2023.
Musk says that Twitter’s financial performance is improving thanks to a myriad of cost-cutting measures he has implemented including mass layoffs which has left the platform operating with a skeleton crew. Despite the layoffs many believe the platform is running better than ever.
Despite early gains made by Musk, much of Wall Street continues to call for him to step down and focus on his established businesses.
Musk has admitted he has too much on his plate, prompting the search for a new CEO. However, the search may be a long one. Musk admitted on Sunday that there is no successor identified and that “no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
