Twitter boss Elon Musk has found a successor for himself on Twitter. It’s supposed to start in six weeks.
Elon Musk has announced his resignation as CEO of Twitter. A successor has been found and will take over in about six weeks, Musk said in a tweet on Thursday. However, Musk did not initially name a name for the new boss. As CTO, he wants to take care of more specific business areas such as products and software in the future.
The billionaire and Tesla founder took over Twitter for $44 billion at the end of October. Immediately afterwards, Musk fired Twitter boss Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde. Musk had accused Twitter executives of misleading him and investors about the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
Twitter poll on resignation
Musk had already announced at the end of 2022 that he wanted to give up the top office – but only once the successor had been arranged. After a series of highly controversial decisions, headwinds mounted. His resignation announcement in December resulted in a self-initiated Twitter poll in which around 57.5 percent of the participants supported his resignation. Musk had previously assured that he would stick to the result of the vote.
Musk took over the post as part of his approximately $ 44 billion purchase of the Internet platform in October. However, he had always signaled that this was not a permanent solution. He also heads the electric car maker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.
Permanent crisis mode
Since the takeover by Musk, the short message service has been in permanent crisis mode. Mass layoffs, churn of advertisers, disputes with the media: Musk’s Twitter purchase had caused a lot of suspicion from the start. The multi-billionaire justified the takeover as an action to strengthen freedom of speech. However, critics feared a further brutalization of the Internet platform. They worried that the change in ownership could lead to more rampant hate speech, hate speech and disinformation.
So far, Musk has not been able to dispel these concerns. On the contrary: With a wave of layoffs, erratic rule changes and other explosive decisions, he shook the online network and scared off advertising customers – the most important source of income.
Bad investment for Musk
In Germany, a report that Twitter had temporarily artificially increased the reach of Musk’s tweets triggered investigations by the Bavarian State Center for New Media (BLM). Musk denied that it was more than just a software bug. However, the software code for a recommendation algorithm disclosed by Twitter showed that there is a separate category for Musk’s tweets. When asked about this in a live stream, a Twitter developer said that they wanted to make sure that no one was disadvantaged when changes were made.
So far, Musk’s purchase of Twitter has been a bad investment. In the recent issue of shares to employees, the company value was only half as high, as Musk confirmed in a BBC interview. At the same time, he claimed in an email to employees that Twitter could eventually be worth $250 billion. The suggestions that the service could become the basis for a super app along the lines of WeChat in China have so far not gone beyond mere speculation. Around 1,500 of the 8,000 employees that once existed.
Musk: Losses only small
Twitter has not had to name business figures since leaving the stock exchange. Musk first claimed that advertising revenues had temporarily halved and that he had to save Twitter from bankruptcy with a cash injection. Most recently, he said that the losses were only small. After the departure of advertising customers, more subscription revenues are to come. Advertisers are only allowed to place ads if they take out a paid subscription for a tick symbol as an individual account or as a company.
