Technology Desk, Delhi Magazine: The famous businessman Elon Musk surprised the world this Thursday by announcing the hiring of a new CEO to take over at Twitter Inc. This move comes after the owner of Tesla previously expressed his intention to leave office.
NBCUniversal’s head of publicity, Linda Yaccarino, is in talks to become the new CEO of Twitter , The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported today.
Musk, who bought Twitter last year and has been running it ever since, has long insisted that he would not be the company’s permanent CEO. In his tweet, he specified that he would remain as Twitter’s CEO and CTO.
Elon Musk has already found someone to replace him at the helm of Twitter. In a brief tweet, the tycoon assured yesterday that he has hired a new manager to run the social network and that he will start working in the position in approximately six weeks.
Excited to announce that I’ve hired 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
Although Musk has not revealed his/her name, the Wall Street Journal has claimed that it would be Linda Yaccarino , a media executive who until now was in charge of the advertising business of the North American television network NBC.
Yaccarino, who has also been one of the instrumental figures in the launch of the network’s video-on-demand service Peacock, interviewed Elon Musk last month at an international advertising conference. In the interview, she recommended Musk be more open to advertisers having influence on the social network and asked him to try to moderate his comments.
Who is Lind Yaccarino
According to Yacarino’s LinkedIn profile, she has been with NBC Universal since 2011. She serves as the President, Global Advertising and Partnerships at the company. Prior to this, she also served as the cable entertainment and digital advertising sales division of the company. Prior to this, Yacarino served at Turner for 19 years. Here she served as Executive Vice President/COO Advertising Sales, Marketing and Acquisition. She is an alumnus of Penn State University. Here she has studied liberal arts and tele communication.
The truth is that his arrival could give a break to the magnate, who acquired Twitter last November for 44,000 million dollars.
Many of the decisions he has made since then, such as the restitution of the account of former US President Donald Trump – expelled for his statements during the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 – or his erratic policy of moderation have driven away the platform’s big advertisers , on whom it depends for its survival. More than 90% of the company’s income comes from advertising and everything indicates that since November approximately half of that business has sunk.
Although Musk has tried to launch new subscription services to make up for the losses, they’re not going down well. To save costs, Musk has also drastically cut staff. According to internal sources, there are barely more than a thousand workers left in the company, 15% of those that were there when Musk bought Twitter.
Most of the layoffs were announced within days of taking control of the company. In those first few weeks, Musk made several drastic decisions that led many users to leave the service.
Linda Yaccarino is a media executive who held a leadership position at NBCUniversal. As for Twitter, Parag Agrawal was the CEO as of my last knowledge update in September 2021. It’s important to verify the most current information as leadership positions at companies can change over time.