After asking his followers if he ought to step down as Twitter’s CEO, Elon Musk heard from a volunteer for his job that was admittedly a joke. Nevertheless it led to Musk unloading concerning the intense strain of working the social media service.
“You need to like ache quite a bit,” Musk responded to the volunteer. “One catch: you need to make investments your life financial savings in Twitter and it has been within the quick lane to chapter since Might. Nonetheless need the job?”
The pseudo job proposal got here from Lex Fridman, a analysis scientist on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise and host of his personal podcast. He launched the concept of changing into Twitter’s CEO as a “enjoyable suggestion.”
“Let me run Twitter for a bit,” Fridman wrote on Sunday. “No wage. All in. Deal with nice engineering and growing the quantity of affection on the earth…Simply providing my assist in the unlikely case it’s helpful.”
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, after making an attempt to again out of his unique provide made in April as a result of, as he mentioned on the time, of the variety of bot accounts on the platform. For the reason that acquisition, Twitter, with Musk on the helm, has been chaotic.
Anxious about Musk’s extra lax content material moderation guidelines, many advertisers have pulled their adverts from Twitter. These modifications in Twitter insurance policies, typically unpredictable and shortly reversed, have partly led to an uptick in hate speech.
In the meantime, Musk’s personal private web value took a nosedive this 12 months as buyers in his different firm, Tesla, offered off their shares due to Musk’s preoccupation with Twitter. Within the course of, he’s misplaced $114 billion on paper, and his spot because the world’s richest particular person.
On the similar time, Musk’s Twitter takeover has been described as “some of the overpaid tech acquisitions within the historical past of M&A offers on the Avenue,” by Wedbush Securities tech analyst Dan Ives.
Regardless of the challenges, Fridman seemed to be nonetheless keen to simply accept the CEO job, replying, “sure. We’ll flip it round.”
Musk made no further response, and the dialog was extra pleasant banter than severe. However Fridman is clearly a fan of Musk’s, typically replying to his tweets or applauding the platform and Musk’s insurance policies. And the 2 seem to have not too long ago agreed to Musk being a visitor on Fridman’s podcast.
Their dialog was kicked off by Musk posting a 12-hour ballot on Twitter that requested customers if he ought to step down. Of the greater than 17.5 million votes solid within the unscientific ballot that closed on Monday, 57.5% mentioned sure.
Earlier than the ultimate outcomes had been in, Musk tweeted philosophically concerning the preliminary tally, “because the saying goes, watch out what you want, as you may get it.” Whether or not he’ll truly step down is unknown. Regardless of saying that he’d “abide by the outcomes” of the ballot, Musk additionally mentioned that nobody who can preserve Twitter alive needs the job—that there’s no “successor.”
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