Elon Musk said on Twitter on Thursday that he had hired a general manager to replace him at the helm of the platform, without revealing his identity but making it clear that he would remain in control of the social network whose functioning he has overseen in recent years disturbed for six months.
“I am pleased to announce that I have hired a new General Manager for X/Twitter. Kicking off in about 6 weeks!” tweeted the billionaire, who bought the company in late October and rebranded it to X Corp last month.
“I will become CEO and Chief Technology Officer to oversee products, software and operations,” he added.
I am pleased to announce that I have hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. It will start in about 6 weeks!
My role will transition to Executive Chairman and CTO, overseeing the Product, Software and Sysop departments.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023
The head of Tesla and SpaceX conducted a poll in December to ask Twitter users whether or not he should leave the platform. About 17 million of them had spoken out, including 57% in favor of his departure.
After some evasions – he had implied that this result was the result of an army of automated accounts – Elon Musk finally tweeted that he would back down once he found “someone crazy enough” to succeed him.
His announcement on Thursday drew enthusiastic comments from his numerous fans and also sent Tesla stock up more than 2% on Wall Street as the busy executive’s time on Twitter worried the market.
redundancies
The entrepreneur has changed the Californian group. On the day of the takeover, he immediately fired former boss Parag Agrawal, former legal director Vijaya Gadde and former chief financial officer Ned Segal.
Then he suddenly fired half the staff and continued to lay off dozens of employees, from engineers who had criticized him to Esther Crawford, the architect of a new subscription and rare public support for the boisterous boss.
According to estimates, the delisted group now employs around 2,000 people instead of 7,500.
The social network has also changed significantly. Elon Musk left many controversial figures banned for violating content moderation rules.
The blue ticks that, once verified, guaranteed the authenticity and credibility of the accounts they had received are now available to anyone with a paid Twitter Blue subscription.
And several Western news organizations, such as the BBC and America’s national radio NPR, have slammed the label of “state-funded media” that once stuck to them.
These chaotic changes and Elon Musk’s various provocations have put off many advertisers on which the platform’s business model depends.
“Giggle”
According to Insider Intelligence, Twitter is on track to make less than $3 billion in 2023, up from $4.14 billion in 2022, or 28% down.
“A new executive is the only way for the company to move forward,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at the research firm, on Thursday.
She believes the company has a chance to “regain advertisers’ trust” if Elon Musk steps down. “It’s hard to think of anyone more controversial or causing more damage to the advertising business than Musk.”
According to an internal document consulted by several American media outlets, the multi-billionaire valued Twitter at $20 billion at the end of March, up from $44 billion at the time of the acquisition.
But “it looks like we’ll break even in Q2 2023,” he tweeted.
Tesla’s Fremont factory is being sued by the state of California for racial discrimination. In December 2021, six women filed a complaint against the same website, accusing the car company of condoning sexual harassment (trash and unsolicited physical contact).
A lover of bad taste jokes, Elon Musk had the “w” on the “Twitter” sign of the San Francisco offices rewritten white to read “Titter,” meaning “to giggle.”
AFP did not hope for a reaction from the social network, which automatically responds to emails from the press with an emoticon in the form of a turd.