NEW YORK – MAY 2, 2012: Elon Musk at the 2022 Met Gala to Celebrate “In America: An” … [+]
Elon Musk did something unimaginable.
Twitter gave him the opportunity to leave his future in the hands (and ours) of his followers.
The new Twitter poll asked whether or not he should step down to be the Twitter head. The votes seem to be in favor of him, with 57% saying that he shouldn’t stay, and 43% suggesting that he should leave. Within minutes the votes have surpassed 700,000. Here’s the poll:
This bold step is to give the power of decision to the people.
Musk indicated in the poll he would abide by the votes. We have been following Musk’s Twitter antics over the past few weeks and this seems to be one of his strangest moves. He is suggesting that he might actually step aside as CEO of the company if everyone votes for him.
It’s also a sign of a massive ego.
Regardless of how this turns out, asking people to keep him “in office” and saying he will agree to whatever happens means he must be extremely confident.
We also don’t know if he can tweak the outcome and even change the voting, since we don’t have access to any of the mechanics and this is not an official election.
It makes me wonder how that is possible, given the fact Twitter and Elon Musk have to be accountable for investors as well as those working at the social media company.
Musk is certain that his followers will rescue him. Maybe. The last few minutes of writing this column have seen the votes swing against him, and are now around 50-50. A mere five minutes later, 52% of the votes were in his favor. It now has a million votes
This means that his tweet was noticed by the pro-Elon Musk crowd immediately and the poll has now reached the masses, meaning, other than his 122,000,000 followers. It’s easy to forget that Musk has almost half the number of followers that are even using Twitter.
I’ve never seen anything like this before.
Musk’s ideas seem to be spontaneous. This is likely because he was in a Qatari luxury suite where he observed the World Cup. Perhaps he asked his friends who were traveling along to conduct the poll, and all of them agreed that it was smart. He might be alone.
Either way, it’s ridiculous to run a poll about his own position.
Here’s what we do know:
Musk wouldn’t be able to let Twitter go, even though he owns it. That would be like Henry Ford giving the reins to someone else in his early days of running the automobile manufacturer. Steve Jobs as he was at Apple. Or Trump’s decision to let someone else lead the United States while he was president. Also, it is highly unlikely.
Musk could still be the man behind the scenes, even though he had to step down.
Was he really hacked?
That’s doubtful.
I’ll post an update in the morning after the poll ends in about 11 hours from now. Right now, the “yes he should step down” votes are running about 54% with 1,300,000 votes.
It’s fascinating stuff.
