After Musk was “removed” by netizens, he may hand over Twitter to the “roll king” who brought the whole family to sleep in the company
If the world is a level-based turn-based game, then Musk’s new level is chosen by himself—or after he owes a large debt, he chooses it deliberately, all for the purpose of building the perfect social network in his mind.
It is difficult for the outside world to know how Musk will rate his performance on the new level. But when Musk used a poll to ask for evaluation, the answers he got were not very good.
Change it, it will be better without you.
After Twitter's 9981 disaster, Musk stopped "taking the truth"
Should I resign as president of Twitter?
Not long ago, Musk initiated this poll on Twitter. 17.5 million users participated in the Twitter referendum, and the final result was that 57.5% of the voters felt that Musk should stay away from Twitter, and only 42.5% of the users hoped that he would stay in office, bringing some new ideas that I don’t know whether it is good or bad. Change.
Long before the acquisition of Twitter, Musk loved Twitter's voting feature. Although the acquisition was pending at the time, Musk used this to make some future decisions for Twitter, and the voting results were realized after a while.
So even if the results of two months of drastic reforms are likely to be lost after leaving office, Musk is willing to accept this result. He himself clearly wrote on the vote: "I will abide by the results of this vote."
It's just that although I persuaded myself to respect the voting results, I still felt uneasy. This can be seen from his subsequent speech:
As soon as I find someone dumb enough to take the job, I'll resign as CEO! After that, I was only in charge of the software and server teams.
Twitter isn't safe yet, it's just not on the fast track to bankruptcy, and there's a lot of work to be done.
Of the people who can keep Twitter afloat, no one wants the job, so there's no current successor.
But even if this job is not easy to do, there are still people rushing to do it.
Artificial intelligence researcher Lex Fridman publicly asked Musk, if he is willing to do nothing without money, can he come to make decisions for Twitter? Musk took advantage of the reply to spit out bitterness, trying to dissuade these successors who thought the job was very simple:
You must love the feeling of pain! There's just one problem with running Twitter: You have to invest your life savings in Twitter, which has been on the "fast track to bankruptcy" since May. Now, do you still want this job?
Fridman's answer is still yes, this time Musk did not reply to him again, but silently sent a new Twitter – those who want power are the least worthy of having power.
So, who is worthy of having the power to determine the future direction of Twitter?
Finding the CEO who can keep Twitter alive
As soon as the voting results came out, although Musk felt that it was not easy to find a successor, the outside world was crazy about thinking of someone to succeed him.
There are two dimensions to selecting people. One is that everyone thinks they are very capable and suitable to take over the unprofitable behemoth of Twitter, and the other is practitioners in the technology industry who are close to Musk.
The list of candidates provided by foreign media to Musk basically belongs to the former, former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg and Musk's favorite technical talent Mike Schroepf. One of the two is the former COO of Meta, and the other is the former CTO (which is in line with Musk's criteria for selecting executives). Both of them are very experienced in how to lead a social giant forward while still making money.
The only problem is that they don't necessarily have the will to do the high-profile, difficult new job that is destined to be.
▲ Sheryl Sandberg
In addition, no matter how the CEO is changed, Musk still owns Twitter. In a situation where the CEO still has to report to Musk, those who have worked with Musk for many years may be more suitable. The ability to be able to get Musk's approval is added together, and the outside world has found 4 most suitable candidates: Jason Calacanis, David Sachs, Sriram Krishnan, Steve davis.
Jason Calacanis once expressed in a private message exchange with Musk that becoming the new CEO of Twitter is his "dream job." In April, when the acquisition was not yet completed, when Musk asked him if he would be willing to serve as an advisor to Twitter after the transaction was completed, his answer was also "you listen and respect."
This is an Internet veteran. In 1990, he was a reporter covering the Internet industry in New York. His experience as a reporter made him know Musk. He has since been an entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host. He founded the blog site Weblogs; he is an angel investor in many startups; his podcast, This Week in Startups, is well-known among American business podcasts and has many loyal listeners.
Calacanis also played an important role in the previous Twitter employee departure drama. According to private text messages released by the court, Calacanis suggested that Musk require employees to return to the office at least two days a week, which will reduce the number of "voluntary resignation" employees by 20%.
David Sachs is a member of the “PayPal gang,” a group of ex-PayPal employees whose entrepreneurial success rate after leaving their former company is impressive.
He was the former COO and product leader of PayPal at the time, building many of the company's key teams, and has extensive management experience in product management and design, sales and marketing, business development, and human resources functions.
Compared with most of his former colleagues who were successful entrepreneurs, Sachs is more like a successful investor. He has invested in a series of successful start-ups, many of which have become giants today, such as Airbnb, Facebook, Uber, etc.
But he also has entrepreneurial experience in social media, he created a social podcast platform called Callin, and in 2008 also founded an enterprise social application Yammer. At odds with his experience may be where he's headed today, with Sachs becoming more involved in politics of late, making his return as CEO less likely.
Sriram Krishnan is the only one of the four nominees with experience working at Twitter. Of course, Krishnan has been working hard in social media these years, and has integrated the work experience of Twitter, Facebook, and Snap. In the latter two companies, he helped the platform's advertising technology take a step forward, while at Twitter he was more responsible for the design and development of products.
Krishnan, now a cryptocurrency investor, may also be the most distant of the four nominees from Musk. To this day, people have no way of locating his role on the Twitter team well, only knowing that he is "temporarily helping Musk."
▲ In the middle is Sri Ram Krishnan
"Desperate Saburo" Steve Davis is very loud.
He has everything Musk likes, a technical background, years of experience, and extreme introversion. This is a ruthless person who works 16 hours a day. The whole family even has the experience of living in the company with a newborn baby. This workaholic is also the current CEO of Musk's The Boring Company.
For the past two months, Davis appears to have been living at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco, California. Although he has no official position, he has been working on Musk's Twitter. He is deeply trusted by Musk and has an engineer background. He is the most concerned one among all candidates.
Efficiency and a little eccentricity are plus points for Musk's successor. Former SpaceX colleagues rated him as having done more work than 11 people.
The experience of starting a business is also very interesting. He sold his own yogurt shop for one dollar and opened "the weirdest bar in Washington".
Speaking of "volume" may be the entry requirement for Musk's designated successor.
Zhu Xiaotong, who was rumored to succeed Musk as Tesla’s global CEO not long ago, seems to be a CEO who meets this standard—basically, he focuses on work 24 hours a day, and can reply to work information in seconds at three or four in the morning. In factories, it is stricter for employees.
With Zhu Xiaotong's case ahead, Davis does look more likely to become Twitter's new CEO.
New boss with overtime as a foregone conclusion
It’s hard to imagine that it has been two months since Musk became CEO of Twitter, but enough stories have happened in these two months.
Musk's aura has brought massive attention to his Twitter acquisitions. Even if it's just an infrequently used feature change, it will get a lot of attention because this is Twitter under Musk. Every new trend of the platform, every layoff has been widely concerned by the outside world, which makes Twitter inevitably stand on the cusp.
During Musk's time as CEO, he made a lot of preparations for latecomers.
The words of the new boss, the new functions that have been put on the shelves in a hurry, and the services that cannot be experienced normally due to the platform downtime, all of these are raising the threshold of user acceptance. Even the new CEO may have whimsical ideas. With Musk's Twitter in front, everyone can be more tolerant.
Although the means of layoffs is not accepted by the world, the money Musk saved for Twitter is real. For a loss-making company like Twitter, although Musk's iron fist is criticized, the final result is acceptable. Moreover, the last remaining employees did accept longer hours of overtime and greater work pressure.
This also makes the successor have to "roll up" with the employees. Working overtime and living in an office, this will not only become the daily life of Twitter employees, but also the daily life of the new CEO.
After all, there is still so much work to be done.
Advertisers who have run away have to try their best to persuade them to come back, tell them that the platform is stable enough, and we provide a more precise way to reach ads; those new functions that are put on and off the shelves still need to be optimized, and it is also necessary to find ways to prevent black products from taking advantage of loopholes. It can satisfy the balance of old users; it is also necessary to find new profit points. After all, a healthy platform cannot rely entirely on advertising, which is also Musk's hope.
Looking at it this way, Twitter CEO may really be one of the most difficult jobs in the world.
#Welcome to pay attention to Aifaner's official WeChat public account: Aifaner (WeChat ID: ifanr), more exciting content will be presented to you as soon as possible.