Elon Musk admits to mistakes in his first two months in charge at Twitter

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has admitted to making mistakes since taking over the company two months ago, but predicts rapid improvement as he seeks to reshape the company. 

‘My error rate in being the Chief Twit will be less over time, but in the beginning, we’ll make, obviously, a lot more mistakes, because I’m new to… hey, I just got here, man,’ Musk told the All-In Podcast on Saturday.

‘I think we’ll have fewer gaffes in the future,’ he added. ‘I think we’re actually executing well and getting things done.’

Since he purchased the company in late October, Musk has presided over a number of major changes, including layoffs of more than half the staff, a botched initial rollout of the Twitter Blue subscription service, and rapid release of new features such as view counts on tweets.  

David Friedberg, one of the podcast hosts, probed Musk on the controversies he has courted at Twitter, asking about the ‘negative feedback about quick action without communication’ from some quarters.

Musk appeared on the All-In Podcast last weekend, where he admitted to making mistakes since taking over Twitter two months ago, but predicts rapid improvement

Following his steep layoffs, Musk estimated in the interview that Twitter currently has about 2,000 employees, down sharply from the 7,500 workers employed at the end of last year

‘I’m a big believer in, you want to look at the net output,’ Musk responded. ‘So, it’s sort of like, what’s the batting average?’

‘You’re going to swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a bit more, but we’re going to swing for the fences here at Twitter, and we’re going to do it quickly,’ he said.

Musk, who completed his takeover of the company on October 27, touted his performance in slashing costs at Twitter while ‘actually shipping product that is good.’

Following his steep layoffs, Musk estimated in the interview that Twitter currently has about 2,000 employees, down sharply from the 7,500 workers employed at the end of last year. 

Musk also conceded that his absolute power as Twitter’s sole director could carry some risks.

‘I guess I’m in some ways in a fortunate position, where I don’t have to answer — it’s not public, and we don’t have a board, really,’ he said. 

‘I can take actions that are drastic. And obviously, if I make a bunch of mistakes, then Twitter won’t succeed, and that will be pretty embarrassing and sad.’

One of the podcast hosts, David Friedberg, probed Musk on the controversies he has courted at Twitter

Meanwhile, Twitter suffered a major outage on Wednesday, leaving tens of thousands of users globally unable to access the popular social media platform or use its key features.

Amid the peak of the disruption, Chief Twit Elon Musk responded to a tweet asking whether the service was down by tweeting that the service ‘works for me’. 

‘Ultimate troll from Elon. Everyone’s feed is broken and his is fine,’ responded one Twitter user. 

Downdetector, a website that tracks outages through a range of sources including user reports, showed more than 10,000 affected users from the United States, about 2,500 from Japan and about 2,500 from the UK at the peak of the disruption. 

Reports of Twitter outages fell sharply by late Wednesday night. Shortly before midnight, Musk tweeted: ‘Significant backend server architecture changes rolled out. Twitter should feel faster.’

Twitter suffered a major outage on Wednesday, leaving tens of thousands of users globally unable to access the popular social media platform or use its key features

Amid the peak of the disruption, Chief Twit Elon Musk responded to a tweet asking whether the service was down by tweeting that the service ‘works for me’

It was not immediately clear whether the outage was related to the server changes, and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com. 

The social network’s status page shows that all systems are operational and did not list any incidents reported on Wednesday.

During the outage, some users were unable to log in to their Twitter account via desktops or laptops. The issue also affected the mobile app and features including notifications.

Others took to Twitter to share updates and memes about the service disruption, with #TwitterDown trending as a hashtag on the social media site.

Some attempts to log in to Twitter from the desktop prompted an error message saying: ‘Something went wrong, but don’t fret – it’s not your fault. Let’s try again.’

Downdetector, a website that tracks outages through a range of sources including user reports, showed more than 10,000 affected users from the United States 

Downdetector showed tens of thousands of user reports of issues with Twitter

The outage comes two months after Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, which has been marked by chaos and controversy.

Hundreds of Twitter employees quit the social media company in November, by some estimates, including engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages.

Other big technology companies have also been hit by outages this year. 

In July, a near 19-hour service outage at Canada’s biggest telecom operator Rogers Telecommunications shut banking, transport and government access for millions.