Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, recently spoke in a last-minute interview with the BBC about his experience running Twitter, which he purchased for $44bn in October. Musk admitted that it has been a challenging and stressful experience, describing it as a “rollercoaster” and “quite painful”. Despite this, he still believes that buying the company was the right decision. During the conversation, Musk also revealed that he would sell Twitter if the right buyer came along.
The interview was conducted live from San Francisco and attracted more than three million listeners. During the conversation, Musk tried to do most of the interviewing himself, defending his running of the company and addressing some of the criticisms he has faced.
One of the most controversial aspects of Musk’s Twitter usage has been his sometimes controversial tweets. He admitted that he has “shot himself in the foot with tweets multiple times,” and joked that he should not tweet after 3am. Musk also acknowledged that the decision to label the BBC’s Twitter account as “government funded media” was not appropriate and that Twitter is changing the label to “publicly-funded.”
Musk revealed that Twitter is now “roughly breaking even,” thanks to the return of most of its advertisers. However, he also acknowledged that the company had to cut its workforce from just under 8,000 to about 1,500, which was not an easy decision to make. He admitted that he did not fire everyone in person, as it was not possible to speak with so many people face to face.
Since Musk bought the company, many of Twitter’s engineers have left, raising concerns about the platform’s stability. Musk acknowledged that there have been some glitches and outages on the site, but said that they have not been for very long and that the site is currently working fine.
Despite the challenges, Musk remains optimistic about the future of Twitter. He believes that the company is in a good position to continue to grow and succeed, and that he has the right team in place to make it happen. Whether or not he decides to sell the company in the future remains to be seen, but for now, Musk is committed to making Twitter a success.
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