Musk To Quit As Twitter CEO But It Will Take Him An Eternity To Find Replacement

Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning, Dec. 21, 2022, in Manila) he will step down as the company’s CEO, but only when he identifies a successor, directly addressing for the first time a Twitter poll he created this week in which millions of users voted for his ouster, Brian Fung reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning, Dec. 21, 2022, in Manila) he will step down as the company’s CEO, but only when he identifies a successor.

In a tweet, Musk said he would resign “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”

He added that following his resignation as CEO, Musk would “run the software & servers teams” at Twitter, indicating he may continue to exercise significant influence on the company’s decision-making.

The announcement comes after more than a day of silence about the poll following its outcome.

On Monday, after more than 17 million users had voted — 57.5% of whom said Musk should resign — the billionaire executive addressed the results only indirectly. He suggested that future Twitter polls could be restricted to paid users of Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.

Terrence O’Brien, managing editor of Engadget, wrote on Dec. 21 that Musk would not sell the company and certainly would continue to manage Twitter via the new CEO if ever one is named.

“Regardless of who eventually takes over as CEO, they'll be taking over a company that is almost unrecognizable compared to just a few months ago. Roughly 70 percent of the staff has either been laid off or quit. Advertisers have fled the platform as hate speech and trolls have thrived. And the content moderation and safety efforts have completely stagnated. The company is also now facing increasing pressure from the government on a number of fronts,” O’Brien stressed.

Writing for CNN’s Business Nightcap, Allison Morrow reported: “Twitter’s been a mess for the past two months that it’s been owned by Elon Musk. That’s been good news for its increasingly popular rival. Mastodon counted approximately 300,000 monthly active users in October. As of last month, that figure has shot up to 2.5 million — a more than 730% increase — according to its founder. Mastodon has a similar look to Twitter and has quickly become the go-to alternative for people who are put off by the Musk era at the larger social platform. Meanwhile, over at Twitter: After his poll showed a majority of users wanted Elon Musk to step down as CEO, he's ... changing how polls work.”

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