On the social media platform Twitter, which he bought last year for $44bn (£35.2bn), Elon Musk announced that he has found a new chief executive to lead the company, without revealing their name.
"Excited to announce that I've hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!" Musk said in a tweet on Thursday.
He added that his role within the company will transition to "exec chair and CTO, overseeing product, software and sysops".
After pressure to name a successor, Musk stated that he would be stepping down, but the timing was unclear.
Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!
My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023
After a poll on the social media site Twitter in which 57.5% of users voted for Elon Musk to step down from his position as chief executive, he stated in December that he would resign "as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job." Musk had purchased the platform for $44bn (£35bn) the previous year.
Musk has consistently made light of any controversies since taking over Twitter, but Tesla investors have grown increasingly anxious that he has been devoting too much time to turning around the network.
During his first two weeks in the job, he quickly fired Twitter's previous chief executive, Parag Agrawal, and other senior leaders and then laid off half its staff in November.
Ongoing issues with Twitter:
Musk’s statement comes after Twitter revoked ‘legacy’ verified badges in April, leaving only paying subscribers with blue check-marks.
The social network, which the mega-billionaire bought last year in a debt-heavy $44 billion deal, announced on Thursday that starting April 1, it will remove the verified check-mark status of accounts that Twitter had been verified as notable before Musk’s takeover unless they have subscribed to Twitter Blue or the business-focused Twitter Verified Organizations plan.
Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2023
What’s next?
If you were to ask Elon what is next for Twitter, I’m sure he wouldn’t have a clue too. However, analysis suggests that Twitter use may be slipping, but it’s certainly not in freefall.
More specifically, the platform’s worldwide active user base may be a few percentage points smaller than it was at the start of 2023, but this doesn’t imply that Twitter is “dying”. Moreover, there’s nothing to say that users who stopped using Twitter over recent weeks due to verification issues won’t return in the future.
But the data does suggest that those users who remain may be using the platform less frequently than they used to.
And perhaps most importantly, the significant decline – and large fluctuations – in Twitter’s own ad reach forecasts will likely do little to encourage departed advertisers back to the platform.
So, while trends in platform use might not be cause for immediate concern, the platform’s financial performance may result in more nights at the office for Musk and team for the foreseeable future.
