Linda Yaccarino is The New CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk Announces

International

oi-Prakash KL

Former NBC Universal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino is the new CEO of Twitter, the current boss of the social media platform Elon Musk announced on Friday in a tweet.

“@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology. Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” he tweeted. This post comes a day after he announced that he had hired a woman for the role and she would join the company in six weeks.

According to industry insiders, the billionaire took the decision to free up from a major distraction and it will now allow him to focus more on Tesla Inc, Reuters reported.

“Tesla investors are likely to celebrate this move too, with Musk’s very hands-on approach at Twitter leading to concerns he had taken his eye off the ball at this EV giant,” Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Sophie Lund-Yates said.

Musk purchased Twitter in a $44 billion deal in October 2022. In December, the billionaire announced that he would step down as the CEO once he finds “someone foolish enough to take the job.”

“This is a fractional positive for Tesla shareholders because he will likely spend a little bit more time on Tesla,” said Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. “However, there are other things that are competing for his time.”

However, his association with Twitter has been tumultuous, marked by numerous changes. He has implemented extensive job cuts at the social media company, and terminated the top management team, including the CEO. He also introduced several alterations to its policies and approach, focusing less on advertisements and more on subscription revenue.

More importantly, he did away with the ‘verified badge’ or ‘blue tick’ and made it a paid feature. Earlier, it was given for free to prominent personalities and journalists.

As far as Yaccarino is concerned, she has been with NBC Universal Media for over 11 years and is credited for modernising the Comcast Corp entertainment and media division’s advertising business and had been in talks for the job before NBC announced her departure Friday morning.

Lou Paskalis, a long-time ad industry executive and CEO of AJL Advisory, a marketing consultancy said that the trajectory of the social media platform will immediately take a 180-degree turn.

Twitter’s “trajectory will immediately take a 180-degree turn” under her leadership, said Lou Paskalis, a long-time ad industry executive and CEO of AJL Advisory, a marketing consultancy.