If you’re hoping to succeed Elon Musk as CEO of Twitter, you have some serious competition – from the man who claims to have invented email.
Shiva Ayyadurai, the MIT-trained brainiac sometimes credited with creating digital correspondence, tweeted Saturday that he wants the job. Musk, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion and has been running it ever since said he will step down in accordance with a poll on the platform that seemed to indicate users want a new person in charge.
“Dear Mr. Musk, I am interested in the CEO position @Twitter,” Ayyadurai tweeted. “I have 4 degrees from MIT & have created 7 successful high-tech software companies. Kindly advise of the process to apply. Sincerely, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, MIT PhD The Inventor of Email.”
Dear Mr. Musk(@elonmusk):
I am interested in the CEO position @Twitter. I have 4 degrees from MIT & have created 7 successful high-tech software companies. Kindly advise of the process to apply.
Sincerely,
Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, MIT PhD
The Inventor of Email
m:1-617-631-6874
— Dr.SHIVA Ayyadurai, MIT PhD. Inventor of Email (@va_shiva) December 24, 2022
Ayyadurai claims to have invented email as a teenager in 1982 when he registered the copyright for an application he wrote. He sued Gawker and another site for disputing his claim, settling both cases out of court. A Republican, the 59-year-old Ayyadurai has twice run unsuccessfully for Senate in Massachusetts. He has been a prominent skeptic of the COVID vaccines and has called for National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci to be fired.
Musk announced he would step aside after a Twitter poll he commissioned on December 18 ended with 57.5% of users voting that he should replace himself. Musk has made a series of changes to the platform and has also released damning internal messages predating his takeover that show how Twitter worked with government agencies including the FBI to censor conservatives.
Last week, Musk said he will focus on the software and hardware at the company once he finds a new CEO.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” he tweeted. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
The high-profile opening has garnered speculation about possible suitors, with some even guessing that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who resigned as chief executive in November 2021, could return. Other names that have been mentioned include former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, engineer and close Musk associate Sriram Krishnan, and Jared Kushner, former President Trump’s son-in-law.
“The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive,” Musk tweeted last week. “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”
