Elon Musk on Twitter purchase: “Caused me a lot of pain”

tech billionaire
Elon Musk speaks to BBC about Twitter purchase: ‘It’s caused me a lot of pain at times’

Actually, Elon Musk shies away from journalists’ questions. Now he made a surprising exception and was interviewed live by the BBC.

It’s a bit funny: Actually, Elon Musk doesn’t think much of the “traditional media”, what he disparages legacy media names. Especially not from public broadcasters like the BBC, which the Twitter boss at times missed the (incorrect) marking “government-funded” on his short message platform. And yet Musk chose the British broadcaster of all things to give him a surprisingly emotional interview.

It was said to be a “hurriedly arranged” meeting with BBC journalist James Clayton, held at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco. And in it Musk revealed how exhausting the time as head of the platform had been for him so far. “It was never boring, it was a real rollercoaster,” said the 51-year-old. “The last few months have been quite stressful.”

Twitter is no longer making losses

In addition, he has sometimes regretted having acquired Twitter for 44 billion US dollars. “It’s caused me a lot of pain on occasion, it wasn’t exactly a party,” Musk said. The new role meant a lot of work for him, but from his point of view everything is going reasonably well now. However, he also admits that after the dismissal of several thousand employees, the system jerked several times and sometimes there were brief failures. He sometimes sleeps in the office, on a couch in the library.

Asked about the profitability of the platform, Musk says Twitter is at least no longer making losses: “We could be profitable this quarter, or more specifically cash flow positive if things continue to go well. I think almost all advertisers have come back or have announced that they will come back.”

Elon Musk is self-critical

The billionaire was surprisingly self-critical when asked about his sometimes controversial tweets over the past few months. “Did I shoot myself in the leg multiple times with tweets? Yes,” he admits. “I don’t think I should be tweeting after three in the morning.”

Source: BBC