As the deal for mega-billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is underway, questions are arising about just who exactly is going to be running the social media giant if the purchase goes through.
Will Musk be the CEO of Twitter, Space X, and Tesla, while running the infrastructure and tunneling firm he founded, The Boring Company, all at the same time?
Or will he appoint someone to run Twitter with his guidance?
The current CEO of Twitter is Parag Agrawal, who has been in the position only since November when he took it over from former CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
While Agrawal is expected to remain in his position until the $44 billion deal is complete, with Musk’s previously voiced complaints about Twitter’s leadership, it is not likely that Agrawal will be asked to stick around, Reuters reported.
Reuters also reported at the end of April that Musk had lined up a new chief executive officer, but the identity of the person was unknown.
But on Thursday, CNBC reported that Musk would fill the Twitter CEO post at least temporarily.
However, since Musk is already running three other multi-billion dollar companies, it is unlikely that he will have time to run the day-to-day operations of Twitter on any long-term basis.
“Elon Musk is actually already a super busy guy. He’s got a couple companies … like Space X and Tesla and the Boring Company,” Aron Solomon, the head of strategy and the chief legal analyst for Esquire Digital told The Western Journal.
Do you think Twitter will improve with a purchase by Elon Musk?
“So, what’s going to have to happen, pragmatically, he’s going to have to find someone who shares his view for Twitter and put them in a position of authority, either as chief operating officer or even perhaps as CEO, without a board, like they have now. He’s not going to have a public board. And that person is going to need to be the day-in, day-out person who makes the calls on what happens on Twitter,” Solomon added.
The first part of that statement is likely to be welcomed by supporters of former President Donald Trump, conservatives who feel they have been marginalized on social media.
Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist.” Anyone taking the helm who “shares his view for Twitter,” as Solomon put it, will be seen as great news for many — particularly on the political right — who’ve felt shut out.
Solomon has a notable track record when it comes to forecasting Musk’s moves. He not only predicted Musk would try to buy Twitter outright, he said Twitter’s initial resistance to the move wasn’t going to be able to stop Musk from pushing ahead.
Solomon pointed out that Dorsey turned “day-in, day-out” operations over to Agrawal, after he stepped down as CEO of Twitter.
“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” Dorsey said in a statement when he stepped down last year, NBC News reported.
“My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead.”
Dorsey was also CEO of Square, his digital payments company.
He was the only person to be the CEO of two public companies with market valuations of greater than $5 billion, according to NBC.
Similarly, Musk will probably have to find someone to steer Twitter while he also runs his other companies.
“Elon Musk is going to be steering ultimately but he can’t always be the person in the driver’s seat, because we saw that didn’t work with Jack Dorsey even when he was ‘just’ running Square and Twitter at the same time,” Solomon said.
But as the deal is still going through and changing, along with the reports that Musk might even just act as temporary CEO for a bit, so there is still no way of predicting who the new Twitter CEO could be.
Particularly, now that there are articles being reported about Musk eventually taking Twitter public again, who could become CEO will largely depend on that and in what direction Musk will want to start steering the social media platform.
