Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, may be considering stepping down as the Chief Executive Officer of the micro-blogging company after less than two months on the job.

Musk tweeted a poll via his verified handle Sunday night asking tweeps to vote on whether he should step down as Twitter’s CEO, adding that he would abide by the poll’s results.

He tweeted, “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.”

As of Monday morning, with about six hours to the end of the poll, “Yes” was winning by a margin of 56.3% to 43.7%.

Since buying Twitter and taking over as CEO in late October, the billionaire owner of Tesla has been involved in a series of controversies on the ‘blue app.’

After buying the company for $44 billion from its former CEO, Jack Dorsey, Musk began to make some controversial changes to the company’s policy and personnel.

He sacked several of Twitter’s top executives and half of the company’s staff immediately after becoming its CEO, and announced a stop to remote working for the remaining, lucky employees.

He then gave the remaining staff an ultimatum that they needed to do “extremely hardcore” work or leave, an announcement that saw hundreds or so of the remaining staff quit the company.

The new CEO has fired employees who openly disagreed with his policies or tweets.

Musk went on to announce a new policy to commercialise the verification badge on the social media platform, a policy which raised dust among tweeps.

He first proposed a $20 monthly subscription fee for the blue badge, which he later slashed to $8.

He has frequently changed Twitter’s rules by executive fiat and with no prior notice and has banned tweeps who violated his new rules.

Recently, Musk disabled the Twitter Space feature from the app after having a heated argument with the host of a Twitter Space he participated in. The company, however, claimed that Space was disabled because of a little glitch. It has since been restored after backlashes from users.

In what seemed to be like a remorse for his unannounced policy changes, Musk tweeted Sunday night that every major policy change would now be subjected to a vote.

He wrote, “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.” Punch/Simeon Ugbodov

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has completed his $44bn (£38.1bn) takeover of Twitter, according to US media and an investor in the firm.

He tweeted “the bird is freed,” in an apparent reference to the deal closing.

A number of top executives, including the boss, Parag Agrawal, have reportedly been fired.

It brings to a close a saga that saw Twitter go to court to hold the multi-billionaire to the terms of a takeover deal that he had tried to escape.

Twitter has not yet confirmed the takeover, but an early investor in the company told the BBC that the deal had been completed.

Mr Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist”, has been critical of Twitter’s moderation policies and the news will be greeted with mixed feelings by Twitter users and employees.

Many people on the right of US politics will celebrate the exit of Mr Agrawal as chief executive. They view people like Mr Agrawal, and his predecessor, Jack Dorsey, as liberals who are curtailing free speech.

They also think that under their stewardship, Twitter has censored conservative voices – an accusation that Twitter denied.

Mr Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and the firm’s top legal and policy executive, Vijaya Gadde, are no longer with the company, according to US media reports.

Mr Agrawal and Mr Segal were escorted out of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters after the deal closed, the Reuters news agency reported.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone thanked Mr Agrawal, Mr Segal and Ms Gadde for their “collective contribution” to the business.

Meanwhile, Bret Taylor – who had served as Twitter’s chairman since last November – updated his LinkedIn profile to indicate that he was no longer in the post.

It is not clear yet if the reported board clear-out is the opening salvo in company-wide job cuts.

Ross Gerber, president and chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, who is a shareholder in both Twitter and Mr Musk’s other company Tesla, told the BBC reports that 75% of staff at the social media company will lose their jobs is “inaccurate”.

“The figure that they have mentioned originally was around 50% of the staff,” he said. “But that was predicated on the teams that were working on reviewing who the staff was and how good the staff is.”

He said it is likely Twitter’s new owner will want to keep people “especially on the engineering side”.

“Really what they’re looking at from the trimming side is management which they’ve already started with upper management,” said Mr Gerber. He said cuts are then likely to extend to product managers “and products they’ve been working on that aren’t going anywhere”.

The social media platform’s shares will be suspended from trading on Friday, according to the New York Stock Exchange’s website.

Mr Musk said he bought the social media platform to help humanity and he wanted “civilisation to have a common digital town square”.

Earlier this week, Mr Musk tweeted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco carrying a kitchen sink with the caption: “let that sink in!”

He also changed his Twitter profile to read “Chief Twit”.

A long road

Mr Musk’s early investments in Twitter initially escaped public attention. In January, he began making regular purchases of shares, so that by the middle of March he had accumulated a 5% stake in the firm.

In April, he was revealed as Twitter’s largest shareholder, and by the end of the month, a deal was finally reached to buy the company for $44bn.

He said he planned to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform as a venue for free speech.

But by mid-May Mr Musk, a prolific Twitter user, had begun to change his mind about the purchase, citing concerns that the number of fake accounts on the platform was higher than Twitter claimed.

In July, he said he no longer wished to acquire the company. Twitter, however, argued the billionaire was legally committed to the acquisition and eventually filed a lawsuit to hold him to the deal.

In early October, Mr Musk revived his takeover plans for the company on condition that legal proceedings were paused

BBC/Simeon Ugbodovon

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The billionaire founder of Tesla Inc, Elon Musk, has said that Twitter may charge  commercial and government users a slight cost

Musk stated this on his verified  Twitter handle, on Wednesday.

He said the microblogging platform would always be free for “casual users.”

“Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users,” he said.

Last week, Twitter announced that it accepted Musk’s buyout offer of $44 billion, making him the new owner of the platform, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.

Following the  announcement, Musk said he wanted to enhance the platform with new features.

Newspeak/ Oluwayemisi Owonikoko