‘There’s no way to make everyone happy’, Elon Musk says of Twitter turnaround plans
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Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk speaking virtually summit as part of the G-20 dialogue in Bali on Nov 14, 2022.
PHOTO: AFP
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NUSA DUA, Indonesia – Having recently taken over Twitter,
As the social media platform’s new owner and chief executive, his first order of business was to sack a handful of top executives.
He has also fired nearly half of the company’s staff to curb spiralling losses.
“There is no way we can make everyone happy, that is for sure,” Mr Musk said on Monday during a question-and-answer session at the Business 20 Summit, ahead of the Group of 20 Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday that Indonesia is hosting in Bali.
He had earlier planned to participate in person, but opted for a virtual attendance at the last minute.
Clad in a tenun shirt and speaking via video link from a very poorly lit room, Mr Musk said: “We had a power outage… I am sitting here in the dark, surrounded by candles. So bizarre.”
Tenun is a unique traditional Indonesian weaving technique, and this particular weave was from Central Sulawesi, which is rich in nickel, the main raw material in making long-range electric vehicles.
The serial entrepreneur touched on changes he is directing for Twitter, his aim for Tesla to produce more affordable electric vehicles, and his long-term goal of enabling travel to most places around the world in 20 minutes with his aerospace business SpaceX.
In late October, after months of waffling and lawsuits, Mr Musk closed his US$44 billion (S$60.4 billion) deal to buy Twitter, which counts Indonesia as its fourth-largest market.
“My workload recently increased quite a lot. I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure,” Mr Musk said, adding that he works morning to night, seven days a week.
He reportedly told staff last week to act on getting YouTubers to use Twitter for their content sharing, paying them the same amount that YouTube does, or 10 per cent more. On Monday, Mr Musk said he wanted to “enable content creators to make a living with content that they submit to Twitter”.
“Twitter, for sure, needs a lot more on video… It is kind of no-brainer to enable longer video on Twitter,” he said.
He was asked if Tesla would make vehicles that would more easily attract customers in developing countries such as Indonesia, where most cars are typically priced at around 200 million rupiah (S$17,700). For comparison, the cheapest Tesla model costs 733 million rupiah.
“Making a much more affordable vehicle would make a lot of sense,” Mr Musk conceded.
He also launched into his pet topic, the future of point-to-point travel around the world with SpaceX.
He said that an equatorial area – especially mountains on the Equator – would make an ideal launch platform for his rockets. The 40,000km Equator passes 13 countries, including 5,000km through Indonesia.
“In the long term, it would make a lot of sense to have launch platforms around the world. You actually can even have situations where you travel by rocket from one part of the world to the next,” he said.
“For a rocket to get to the complete other side of the world, (it would take) 45 minutes, and to most places, about 20 minutes.”
The two-day Business 20 Summit, which included panel discussions, presentations and networking sessions, was attended by ministers and business leaders, who offered policy recommendations around sustainability and balanced economic growth.
