A new – and hopefully – less colorful CEO would soon be at the helm of Twitter, as per a bombshell tweet by Elon Musk just moments ago.
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
The CEO of Twitter and Tesla plans to step back from his apex role at the global town square, with his replacement assuming command of the ship within six weeks. Elon Musk has not divulged the identity of the new CEO, though it is obvious from the wording of the tweet that the apex leadership position at Twitter would now be occupied by a female. For his part, Musk would become the executive chair and the CTO at X Corp. and Twitter, overseeing product development, software, and sysops.
Of course, this development bodes well for Twitter's long-term prospects, which have been suffering of late as major advertisers have continued to withhold their checkbooks from the global town square under Elon Musk's distinctly colorful leadership style. As we noted in a number of our previous posts, 37 of the platform's 100 biggest advertisers did not spend even a single dollar on Twitter in Q1 2023, with another 24 advertisers in this august cohort curtailing their ad spend on the platform by around 80 percent.
This does not, however, mean that Twitter did not achieve significant milestones under Elon Musk's leadership. The platform now has around 250 million Daily Active Users (DAUs), constituting an increase of 2.46 percent relative to the 244 million DAUs that Twitter boasted of just six months back. The company is also at the cusp of becoming cash flow positive.
Nonetheless, much of Twitter's recent financial success owes its existence to the 87 percent plunge in the company's payroll since October 2022, when Musk first took over the global town square as an interim CEO.
Since assuming command of Twitter, Elon Musk has tried to attract content creators by offering lucrative incentives. He has also launched the Twitter Blue premium subscription tier. However, the initiative has yet to see any major breakthrough, having earned just $11 million in revenue in the first three months of its launch.
Some of Elon Musk's decisions, however, courted outright controversies. For instance, he was quick to ban the Twitter account of the comedian Cathy Griffin for impersonating him. Musk also took a proverbial machete to the "Block the Blue" movement by blocking the ability of non-paying Twitter accounts to see verified notifications and then nuking the movement's Twitter account entirely. Moreover, he slapped "state-affiliated media" tags on the accounts of BBC and NPR only to backtrack soon after as the advertisers rose up en masse.
A fresh face at the helm of Twitter would give the company the required breathing space to grow. It would also allow Elon Musk to concentrate on Tesla, which has been floundering of late. It is hardly a surprise, therefore, that Tesla shares are rocketing higher right now.
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