On Tuesday Elon Musk said he will resign as chief executive of Twitter if he finds a replacement.
This was as a result of the poll he launched, asking users if they wanted him to step down. In the poll results posted on Monday, 10 million votes were in favour of Musk stepping down.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted, saying he will then only run software and server teams at Twitter.
Earlier this week he mocked a tweet about him looking for someone to take over his position with a laughing emoji and tweeted that “no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive”.
Musk has fully owned Twitter since 27 October, which he bought for $44billion, and has repeatedly courted controversy as CEO, sacking half of its staff, readmitting far-right figures to the platform, suspending journalists, and trying to charge for previously free services.
Analysts have pointed out that the stock price of his electric car company Tesla has dropped by one-third since Musk’s Twitter takeover, and some suggest Tesla’s board put pressure for Musk to quit his Twitter role.
On Tuesday, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said: “Finally, a good step in the right direction to end this painful nightmare situation for Tesla investors.”
Musk had renewed his warnings that the platform could be heading for bankruptcy.
The unpredictable entrepreneur posted his poll on his resignation shortly after trying to extricate himself from yet another controversy.
On Sunday, Twitter users were told they will no longer have a platform to promote content from other social media sites.
Musk reversed course a few hours later, writing that the policy would be limited to suspending accounts only when that account’s “primary purpose is promotion of competitors”.
The attempted ban created an uproar on Twitter, even Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey failed to understand Musk, in the beginning Dorsey backed Musk’s takeover.
Analyst Ives noted that “advertisers have run for the hills and left Twitter squarely in the red ink, potentially on track to lose roughly $4billion per year.”
Shortly after taking over the platform, Musk announced that Twitter would charge $8 a month to verify users’ identities, but he had to suspend the “Twitter Blue” plan after an embarrassing hike of fake accounts. It has since been relaunched.
On 4 November, shortly after Musk said that the social media platform was losing $4million a day, Twitter laid off half of its 7 500-strong staff.
Musk also reinstated Trump’s account though, the former US president indicated he had no interest in the platform – and said Twitter would no longer work to combat Covid-19 disinformation.
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