Elon Musk confirms Linda Yaccarino as new Twitter CEO

Elon Musk has named NBCUniversal’s head of global advertising as the new chief executive of Twitter, although he will continue to have a senior role at the social media platform.

Linda Yaccarino will take over as chief executive from the billionaire, who has proven to be controversial and unpredictable in the role since he bought the company for $44bn last October.

Musk indicated that he will still play a prominent role at Twitter, tweeting that Yaccarino will focus on business operations while he will concentrate on product design and new technology. Before confirming Yaccarino’s appointment, Musk had also tweeted that he would become executive chair.

Musk added on Friday that he looked forward to working with Yaccarino on transforming Twitter into X, the “everything app” along the lines of China’s multi-faceted WeChat.

Musk had said in December he would step down as chief executive as soon as he found someone “foolish enough to take the job”. He confirmed on Thursday that the wait was over, tweeting: “Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!”

Musk did not name Yaccarino in the initial post, but on Friday, NBCUniversal, the entertainment conglomerate behind the NBC TV network and the Universal film studio, announced that Yaccarino had left the business without revealing her onward destination. Musk’s confirmation came soon afterwards.

Yaccarino, whose official title at NBCUniversal was chairman of global advertising and partnerships, is active on Twitter and has almost 19,000 followers. Her most recent tweets focused largely on NBC programming and NBC’s ad-supported Peacock streaming service, which she played a key role in launching.

She interviewed Musk on stage at an advertising conference in Miami last month, in which she told the Tesla CEO that some advertisers “have a challenge with your points of view”, to which Musk replied that some of his tweets should be taken with a “grain of salt”. Yaccarino also said in the interview: “If freedom of speech, as he says, is the bedrock of this country, I’m not sure there’s anyone in this room who could disagree with that.”

In April, Yaccarino tweeted a clip from an interview between Musk and the comedian Bill Maher on the HBO show Real Time Bill Maher, in which she tagged Musk with an “on fire” emoji. In the clip, Musk is asked by Maher about the “woke mind virus”, prompting Musk to state that the world needed to be “cautious” about anything that is “anti-meritocratic” and “results in the suppression of free speech”.

Musk had told a Delaware court in November he expected to reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company. In December, he confirmed this, tweeting that he would go as soon as he found a replacement.

Last month, it emerged that Twitter had been folded into a newly created shell company, X Corp – the business idea referenced in Musk’s tweets on Thursday and Friday. Musk has referred to Twitter as being an “accelerant” for creating X, his “everything app” resembling WeChat, which allows users to perform a variety of tasks from messaging to ordering food and paying bills.

Musk took over as Twitter boss as soon he completed the purchase and after immediately firing the company’s top executives, including the then chief executive, Parag Agrawal. Days later he cut almost half of Twitter’s 7,500 person-strong workforce. The company now employs about 1,500 people.

Musk’s adherence to free speech principles as a self-declared “free speech absolutist” has caused controversy and jarred with advertisers – Twitter’s main source of income. Twitter’s owner has overseen the reinstatement of previously banned accounts, such as those belonging to Donald Trump and the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate.

Concerns over hateful content and a botched relaunch of Twitter’s subscription product led to advertisers halting their spending on the platform. Musk revealed in March that the company’s heavily ad-dependent income was due to drop to less than $3bn this year, down from $5.1bn in 2021.

The company’s initial relaunch last year of its subscription service, Twitter Blue, was chaotic, after pranksters exploited the opportunity to verify their account for $8 a month by launching fake accounts for brands including the pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and public figures including the pope.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s former boss has sued the company over legal fees.

It was reported in March that the company is worth less than half what Musk paid for it last autumn. He said last month that Twitter, which took on borrowings of $13bn as part of Musk’s takeover funding, was “roughly breaking even”, having compensated for the revenue slump with an aggressive cost-cutting agenda.

Yaccarino’s hiring could allay concerns of investors at Tesla, who have been increasingly worried about the time that Musk is devoting to turning Twitter around. Tesla shares jumped 2.4% in trading volume as the news broke.

Musk said on Friday that bringing Yaccarino on would allow him to devote more time to Tesla.

Craig Irwin, an analyst at the US financial services firm Roth MKM, said: “The boat anchor called Twitter is loosened from Musk’s ankle. Now he can get back to spending more time creating value at Tesla.”