Can Twitter Survive The Chief Twit?

Elon Musk is ruling his newest acquisition the way he does the rest of his empire: impulsively, vindictively, loudly. It really doesn't need to be this way

- Kurt Wagner, Sarah Frier and Brad Stone

It was Day 5 of Elon Musk’s riveting, rambunctious takeover of Twitter Inc. The owner and self-proclaimed Chief Twit had spent much of the last weekend in October at his new company’s San Francisco headquarters among people desperate to please him: employees angling to keep their jobs amid steep layoffs and personal advisers helping him with the turnaround. He arrived in New York at 2 a.m. that Monday with plans to visit Twitter’s offices in Chelsea and spend the day courting advertisers, the group most important to the company’s survival.

In the early afternoon, a team from Horizon Media Inc. stopped by. Horizon is one of the largest ad agencies in the world, chaperone to brands such as Capital One and Burger King. Also in attendance were two ad execs from Twitter, as well as two major fans of Musk’s: investor and podcaster Jason Calacanis and, inexplicably, his mother, Maye Musk. Horizon Chief Executive Officer Bill Koenigsberg sat at the head of the table with a colleague. “Some of my clients knew that I was going to meet you,” Koenigsberg said, “and they all asked, ‘Is he going to get Donald Trump back on the platform?’ ”