Elon Musk says that “someone else” could be running Twitter this year.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, said on Wednesday that the online platform might have a new CEO by the end of 2023. He said that it has been a “rollercoaster” since he took full ownership of the company last year.
“I think the end of this year might be a good time to find someone else to run the company,” he said via video at the World Government Summit in Dubai.
“I need to make sure the organisation is stable and in good shape, and that the product roadmap is clear… I think that it should be stable by the end of this year.”
Musk paid $44 billion for his favourite social media platform. Leaving day-to-day operations would stop people from saying he isn’t paying attention to his other businesses, especially Tesla, whose share price has dropped since he took over Twitter.
Musk hasn’t said much about what kind of leader he wants. When he first said he was stepping down as CEO on December 21, all he said was that he would focus on software and server engineering once “someone foolish enough” took his place.
Since October 27, when South African-born billionaire Elon Musk took full control of Twitter, the platform has been in chaos, with mass layoffs, the return of banned accounts, and the suspension of journalists who were critical of Musk.
Racist or hateful tweets went up after Musk took over, which caught the attention of regulators and scared away big advertisers, Twitter’s main source of income.
Musk told the Dubai conference, “It’s been a wild ride.”
Last week, thousands of Twitter users said they were having trouble using the site because paying users could now send tweets with up to 4,000 characters.
US tech media said that Musk told Twitter employees to stop working on new features and instead focus on fixing problems.
Even though things were hard, the boss of Twitter encouraged more communication.
“It’s great as a place for people to talk. And I would just suggest that people talk to each other more and try to sound like themselves.
“Sometimes, people have someone else manage their Twitter account or do something similar. People should just tweet themselves… I think that’s how it should be done.”