It took some time, but Elon Musk ultimately kept his promise. The results of the vote he arranged on December 18 will be respected by the whimsical and captivating visionary.
The billionaire, as he frequently does for major issues, asked Twitter users to vote on his future as CEO of the platform. The question was simple: should he resign as CEO of Twitter?
There were just two possibilities for voters: yes or no. Nearly 18 million Twitter users voted, with 57.5% voting Yes. Musk had promised to respect the outcome of the referendum.
However, upon the revelation of the results, the Techno King, as he is called at Tesla (TSLA) – Get Free Report, did not appear to acknowledge the outcome.
Within hours of the outcome, he began reacting to tweets from people claiming that a high number of fraudulent accounts, or spam bots, had voted. This theory spurred the serial entrepreneur to declare that in the future, only subscribers to Blue, Twitter’s $ 7.99 per month subscription service, will be able to vote on critical choices.
If he had followed this regulation, just 140,000 subscribers would have been able to vote, rather than the millions who did. According to the New York Times, Blue has only 140,000 customers as of November 15.
Musk finally chose to acknowledge the results and draw the implications about 24 hours after they were released. He recently announced his departure as CEO, however he will remain in charge of the engineering teams.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” the billionaire announced on December 20. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
He didn’t say if he already had a few names in mind. But according to CNBC, the billionaire had embarked on the search for a successor long before he organized the poll.
The billionaire said on December 18 that: “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive, There is no successor.”
“The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive,” he added.
When podcaster Lex Fridman and a fan of his volunteered, Musk took the opportunity to give two important criteria for the new CEO.
“You must like pain a lot,” Musk responded. “One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?”
Last month, the billionaire stated that “the company is losing more than $4 million every day.” On December 20, he reinforced his bleak outlook on Twitter Spaces. He said that prior to his substantial expense cutbacks, the platform was on course to generate $3 billion in negative cash flow.
Since Elon Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion on October 27, the platform’s importance has grown even more. It has become the social network that practically all of the world’s media covers on a daily basis.
