Elon Musk to become the Interim Chief of Twitter
Elon Musk, a multibillionaire entrepreneur, announced on Monday that he would be in charge of Twitter, the social media firm he just paid $44 billion for. After dismissing several key employees last week, including business CEO Parag Agarwal, the billionaire entrepreneur who also owns the tunneling company The Boring Company and brain-chip startup Neuralink, is expected to take over as interim CEO of Twitter, according to a source. Musk has suggested changing the platform’s user verification system, which is currently free.
Musk asserts that the best way to combat bots and trolls is to monetize accounts. He also highlighted that Twitter cannot solely rely on advertising revenue to cover its expenses. Twitter has also suggested that verified accounts may need to pay a small monthly charge to maintain their blue badges. In a securities filing, Musk identified himself as the CEO of Twitter. In another file that was made on Monday, Musk revealed that as a result of the transaction, he became the only director of the business. Twitter on Monday refused to comment on whether Musk would nominate anyone else as CEO or how long he might hold the position. Musk changed the name of his Twitter account to “Chief Twit” before his move to let people know what was going to happen.
In the filing, 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 Agarwal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Ego Durban, Fei-Fei Li, and Mimi Alemayehou.” Soon afterward, Musk tweeted and clarified that the move to dissolve the board “is just temporary”.
Nick Caldwell, who was a general manager at Twitter’s Core Technologies, announced on Twitter on Monday that he was no longer working for the company.
Since last week’s acquisition of Twitter, Musk’s teams have started speaking with former employees to delve into the platform’s software code and gain an understanding of how it operated. The Twitter team has only gotten a few instructions about what to do, so they are completely dependent on news sources to find out what is going on inside the company.
Since Musk tried to buy Twitter in April of this year, Tesla’s stock has lost a third of its value, while the S&P 500 Index has only lost 12% during the same time period.