Elon Musk hires new Twitter CEO
Elon Musk is ready to step down as Twitter CEO after hiring a female executive to take over.
Elon Musk is ready to step down as Twitter CEO.
The 51-year-old business mogul bought the social media platform in October but vowed to find someone else to run the company in December after conducting a poll via his own Twitter account, and he's now announced he's hired an unnamed female executive to take over in the next few weeks.
He tweeted: "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.(sic)"
Although Elon didn't name his successor, the Wall Street Journal reports Linda Yaccarino, who is head of advertising at NBCUniversal and helped launch their Peacock streaming channel, has been in talks to take the position.
Last month, Elon claimed his dog Floki would be the new CEO.
He told the BBC: “I’m not the CEO of Twitter. My dog is the CEO of Twitter.”
His bizarre comment came after a series of Tweets in February, in which he posted pictures of his pet dressed in human clothing, and announced: “The new CEO of Twitter is amazing. He’s great with numbers.”
The Tesla boss also used his BBC interview to defend the sacking of around three quarters of Twitter’s staff after his takeover in October.
He insisted the platform would have gone bankrupt if he hadn’t immediately cut costs, claiming the company had only “four months to live”.
Elon added: “This is not a caring/uncaring situation. If the whole ship sinks then nobody’s got a job.”
Twitter now has about 1,500 employees compared to “just under 8,000 staff members” before the takeover, according to the billionaire.
Elon added he had been “under constant attack” over his takeover, which he said hurt him as he doesn’t possess “a stone-cold heart”.
He said: “If you’re under constant criticism and attack, and that gets fed to you non-stop, including through Twitter, it’s rough.
“But it’s important to get negative feedback.”
