Elon Musk Twitter’s New CEO becomes Company’s Sole Director After Takeover
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, said on Monday that he will lead Twitter, the social media business he recently purchased for $44 billion (approximately Rs. 3,63,700 crore). Wall Street analysts have warned that this decision may put the billionaire at risk of becoming overworked.
Elon Musk, who also owns the tunnelling company the Boring Company, the brain-chip startup Neuralink, and the rocket company SpaceX, fired Twitter’s former CEO Parag Agrawal and other senior executives last week and has proposed changes to the platform’s user verification system, which has been free up until now.
Stephen King tweeted that he would not be willing to pay $20 (approximately Rs. 1,700) per month to maintain the Twitter verified badge, to which Musk responded, “How about $8?”
The billionaire claimed that adding a fee was the best way to stop trolls and automated accounts on the network and that Twitter couldn’t fully rely on advertising revenue.
Musk revealed in a securities filing that he is now the CEO of Twitter. Musk announced that as a result of the acquisition, he is now the only director of Twitter in another filing he made on Monday.
In a previous reference to his intended action, Musk altered his Twitter bio to read “Chief Twit.” On Monday, Twitter declined to comment on whether Musk will appoint a successor or how long he may serve as CEO.
Musk said, “The following persons, who were directors of Twitter prior to the effective time of the merger, are no longer directors of Twitter: Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou.”
Musk quickly tweeted that the decision to abolish the board “is only temporary” without going into further detail.
Musk tweeted on Sunday in response to a question on what was “most messed up at Twitter” that “there seem to be 10 people “managing” for every one person developing.”
Nick Caldwell, a general manager at Twitter’s Core Technologies, announced on Monday that he was leaving the organisation. Reuters contacted Twitter and Caldwell for comment after regular business hours, but neither one responded.
Musk criticised Twitter for months for being reluctant to deploy product updates or remove spam accounts, but since the takeover, which ended last week, Musk has moved rapidly to impose his mark on the social media platform.
According to two people with knowledge of the situation, his teams started having meetings with some employees to look at the software code of Twitter and learn how various components of the site operated.
Some employees who talked with Reuters claimed they had minimal contact with Musk or other executives and were making sense of the business through news stories. Since Musk announced a bid to acquire Twitter in April, Tesla’s stock has lost a third of its value, compared to a 12 percent fall in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same time period.
