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‘There’s no way to make everyone happy’, Elon Musk says of Twitter turnaround plans

This article is more than 12 months old

NUSA DUA, Indonesia – Having recently taken over Twitter, the world’s richest man Elon Musk, knows he has ruffled some feathers.

As the platform’s new owner and chief executive, his first order of business was to sack a handful of top executives. He also fired more than three quarters of the company’s staff to curb spiralling losses.

“There is no way we can make everyone happy, that’s for sure,” Mr Musk said on Monday during a question-and-answer session at the Business 20 Summit, ahead of the G-20 Summit on Nov 15-16 that Indonesia is hosting in Bali.

He had earlier planned to participate in-person, but opted for a virtual attendance at the last minute.

Speaking via video link from a very poorly lit room, a batik-clad Mr Musk said: ”We had a power outage… I am sitting here in the dark, surrounded by candles. So bizarre.”

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 Space-X.

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’s 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’s kind of no-brainer to enable longer video on Twitter,” he said.

He was also asked if Tesla would make cars 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).

“Making a much more affordable vehicle would make a lot of sense,” Mr Musk conceded.

He also launched into his pet topic of the future of point-to-point travel around Earth 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 is 45min, and to most places, about 20min.”

The two-day B-20 Summit, which included panel discussions, presentations and networking sessions, was attended by ministers, business leaders that offered policy recommendation around sustainability and balanced economic growth.

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