Twitter: Elon Musk finally gives up on joining the board of directors

It will ultimately be no. Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX, who recently took a 9.2% stake in the capital of Twitter, has given up his seat on the board of directors. “Elon’s arrival on the board was to become officially effective on April 9, but Elon let it be known that same morning that he was no longer joining the board,” Parag Agrawal, the network’s chief executive, announced on Monday. social, in a message to Twitter staff.

With his stake, the billionaire became the largest shareholder in the San Francisco-based group. He had specified in the document sent to the stock market regulator that his participation was “passive”, that is to say that he did not intend to influence major strategic decisions. He had also undertaken not to increase his stake beyond 14.9%. But his arrival on the board of directors, announced last Tuesday, had been interpreted as a desire on his part to finally get involved in the group’s strategy. The news was welcomed by the markets.

Laughing Emoji

After a week of adventures, the richest man in the world has therefore backtracked. “I think it’s for the best,” wrote Parag Agrawal on Monday. “We have appreciated and will always appreciate the participation of our shareholders, whether they serve on our board or not. Elon is our largest shareholder and we will remain open to his participation,” he continued.

Just after this announcement, Elon Musk tweeted a laughing emoji, without any accompanying text… For the past few days, the man with 81.3 million subscribers has multiplied tweets suggesting a review of the functioning of Twitter. He recently surveyed Internet users to find out if they believed that the social network respected freedom of expression. Question to which a majority had answered “no”.

Multiplication of polls

Elon Musk also conducted a poll to ask if Twitter users wanted an “edit” button to correct a tweet after posting. Nearly 4.4 million people voted, of which around 73% answered “yes”. However, Twitter has always refused to offer this option, requested by many users.

Pushing the provocation further, the billionaire went so far as to wonder, on Saturday, if the social network was not “dying”, mentioning very followed but inactive accounts. “Most of these ‘super’ accounts rarely tweet and post little content. Is Twitter Dying? “, he wondered, in legend of a list of the 10 profiles with the most subscribers. He notably noted that the singer Justin Bieber, in second position, had tweeted only once this year.

On Sunday, Elon Musk made two more suggestions: “Remove the w in twitter? (with, as a choice of answers, “yes” or “of course”) and “Convert the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco into a shelter for the homeless since nobody goes there anyway”. More than 90% of the 1.9 million voters said “yes”. He then proposed changes to the paid subscription plan for the social network, Twitter Blue.

Employee concerns

“The decisions we make and how we execute them are in our hands and no one else’s,” Parag Agrawal said in his message to employees, calling on them to ignore “distractions” in the future. “Our goals and priorities remain unchanged,” Parag Agrawal said.

According to the “Washington Post”, several Twitter employees had expressed their concern at the arrival of Elon Musk in the capital. Considering in particular that the values ​​of the richest man in the world were not aligned with the corporate culture of the social network.