Elon Musk to Step Down as Twitter CEO in Six Weeks

Elon Musk has finally found a new CEO for Twitter Inc after a few months of searching. Within the next six weeks, Elon Musk will step down from his position, and a new CEO whose name has not been disclosed will take over the company. Notably, Musk will remain Twitter’s executive chairman and chief technology officer, which means he will continue to oversee the company.

Excited to announce that I’ve 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

Back in December 2022, Musk announced his decision to step down as Twitter CEO as soon as a replacement would be found. At that time, the billionaire published a poll asking his followers to decide whether he should stay on or quit as the CEO of the company. As we reported, the results of the poll that saw more than 17.5 million participants were in favor of finding another chairman, with 57.5% votes for Musk stepping down.

While Elon Musk has not revealed the name of the next Twitter CEO, The Wall Street Journal has reported about Linda Yaccarino being the one. Linda Yaccarino is Chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal – one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information. She has been with the company since 2011. Recently, there have been reports about Linda Yaccarino being in talks with Elon Musk regarding the role.

Twitter Under Elon Musk’s Guidance

Under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter has significantly transformed. Since he closed a $44 billion deal to acquire the platform, Twitter has seen mass layoffs of employees, account suspensions, content policy changes, revamp of subscription services, and more.

Firstly, the billionaire had slashed the company’s workforce from a high of about 7,500 to a low of 2,000 in one of the most drastic job cuts, with the aim to reduce the operational cost of the company. Notably, cutting the workforce by around 75% has raised concerns about Twitter’s capacity to maintain its platform.

Secondly, Twitter launched a new version of its subscription service, Twitter Blue, which allowed users to access verification if they pay a monthly fee of $8. The initiative did not work as planned. Many celebrities and high-profile figures like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian, and others lost their verified blue check marks as they did not subscribe to the service. As a result, the removal of blue ticks provoked confusion, many users found it rude and objected to the changes amid fears that such a system would encourage the spread of misinformation and fake news.

A few days after the removal of the blue ticks, Twitter started giving them back to high-profile accounts with over one million followers.

During Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter also suffered a few technical errors and outages. One of them took place in February, it lasted for hours and required an emergency fix, prompting an apology from the company.

Tesla Shares Affected by Musk’s Resignation

Notably, Musk’s announcement about stepping down as Twitter CEO has had a positive impact on shares of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA). Apparently, Tesla investors are happy about the move, as Tesla stock added 2.10% to its price and closed at $172.08 per share following the announcement. After hours, Tesla shares jumped by another 1.55% to $174.75.

Earlier, Tesla investors were saying that Musk was distracted by running Twitter and SpaceX, which affected the performance of the EV maker.

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Darya is a crypto enthusiast who strongly believes in the future of blockchain. Being a hospitality professional, she is interested in finding the ways blockchain can change different industries and bring our life to a different level.