Elon Musk on Thursday said he’s found a new CEO of Twitter, months after he first promised to step back from the role. The new CEO will assume the role at Twitter Inc., which recently changed its name to X Corp., in the coming weeks, Musk said. He did not provide a name. However, the Wall Street Journal reported Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, was in talks for the job.
“Excited to announce that I have a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” Musk said in a tweet.
Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!
My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023
Musk had not publicly named Yaccarino but said Thursday that the new CEO will start in about six weeks, after which he will transition to an executive chair and chief technology officer.
The choice of Yaccarino, a longtime media industry insider, could signal a change at the ailing microblogging platform and prove a relief to advertisers, many of whom left Twitter after Musk took control. Twitter has laid off roughly three-quarters of its staff, and users have complained about outages and a shift in atmosphere amid sweeping Musk-led changes.
Tesla shares jumped more than 2%, in a sign that investors were pleased about the move. Several Tesla investors were concerned that Musk was too distracted by running Twitter and that he should redirect his time to steering the electric vehicle company, where he is also CEO.
In April, many progressive Tesla shareholders publicly urged Tesla’s board to ensure that Musk would dedicate more time to the automobile company. Musk, who is also CEO of the reusable rocket maker SpaceX, completed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October and made his mark there immediately. He fired the company’s top executives and laid off hundreds of employees.
Musk, who has had a chaotic reign as “Chief Twit” since buying the company in October, said he would become Twitter’s executive chair and chief technology officer, overseeing product, software, and system operations.
In December, Musk ran a poll on the platform asking users whether he should step back as Twitter’s CEO, which ended with the majority of users voting in the affirmative. Musk said he would abide by the results of the poll but later backtracked, saying he would hand over the role “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” In February, he reiterated that he planned to find a replacement by the end of the year.
Musk has faced criticism for a series of policy changes at Twitter, which often came without clear justification and raised concerns about the impact on Twitter’s users.
Under his leadership, Twitter’s core advertising business has suffered. Several advocacy groups have documented that multiple companies halted their paid promotional campaigns as the social messaging service saw an increase in offensive speech and hateful rhetoric. Potential new CEO Yaccarino, however, is a well-connected and seasoned operator in the advertising world and could help Twitter bolster its ad business.
Musk has tried to make up for the ad revenue shortfall with a new subscription service, Twitter Blue, which offers features such as the ability to compose longer tweets. In April, the company removed so-called “legacy” blue checkmarks from non-paying users whose identities had been verified, opening the door to potential impostors. Government accounts and some corporate accounts will still maintain verification through a separate set of icons, in silver and gold, respectively.
Musk recently said that Twitter is now “trending to breakeven,” after previously saying it was at risk of bankruptcy. Now, the company’s new CEO will be tasked with trying to help turn around the struggling company and help Musk recoup some of the $44 billion spent acquiring the platform.
Even as Musk prepares to step back from the CEO role, he will likely maintain significant control over the future direction of the company. After taking over the company in October, Musk cleared out the C-Suite, dissolved the board, and became both the CEO and sole director of the platform.
He has also allowed previously banned users back on the platform and courted political controversy with statements such as saying that the media is racist against white and Asian people.
Twitter has also weathered several technical errors and outages during Musk’s tenure as CEO, some of which coincided with massive layoffs, which he pitched as necessary for the financial health of the company.
IPG, one of the world’s largest advertising companies, issued a recommendation in the fall through its media agencies for clients to temporarily pause their spending on Twitter because of moderation concerns.
Last month, in an interview with the BBC, Mr. Musk said that most of Twitter’s advertisers had returned.
In Ms. Yaccarino, Twitter would get an executive with deep ties to the advertising industry and extensive experience in the media sector. Ms. Yaccarino, whose star has risen over the course of a long career at NBCUniversal, has personal relationships with most of the chief executives of the advertising holding companies, a key constituency for Twitter.
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