Elon Musk Confirms Hiring New Twitter CEO
Soon after the announcement, Tesla’s stock surged 1.95%.
- Yesterday, more than six months after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk confirmed he has hired the new Twitter CEO.
- Reportedly, NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, Linda Yaccarino, will succeed Musk at Twitter as CEO.
- Tesla shareholders reacted positively to the news.
Twitter is all set to get a new CEO, as current head Elon Musk promised, in approximately six weeks. The billionaire technocrat confirmed it over Twitter (where else?) yesterday and added he would continue at the company as the chief technology officer.
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
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino may succeed Musk as Twitter’s CEO.
Who is Linda Yaccarino?
Yaccarino is the current chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. Yaccarino joined NBCUniversal in 2011 after almost 20 years at Turner Entertainment.
During her time at NBCUniversal, Yaccarino advocated for effective, measurable advertising, something Musk would be keen on having at the microblogging company.
Before Twitter was delisted, the company’s $1.08 billion ad revenue (Q2 2022) accounted for 91.52% of its total ($1.18 billion) for the same quarter. Twitter registered a net loss of $270 million in the same quarter, higher than the previous four quarters combined.
More importantly, advertising conference in Miami in April 2023, Yaccarino lauded Musk’s work ethic and said, “Buddy, I met my match.”
Yaccarino also possibly worked on the recent NBCUniversal partnership with Twitter (and Snapchat) signed to amplify NBCU’s coverage of the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024.
The End of the Elon Musk Saga at Twitter?
Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 after months of back and forth with the company’s board, which initially went so far as to swallow the proverbial ‘poison pill’ to keep Musk at bay. However, the narrative took a different trajectory when Musk expressed concerns over the legitimacy of Twitter’s bot/spam/fake account data disclosed by the company.
Subsequently, Musk and his team unanimously terminated the agreement almost three months after announcing the intention to buy out the company. The Parag Agrawal-headed board responded by suing Elon Musk in July last year for trying to backtrack on the $44 billion acquisition.
Fast forward to three months later: Musk completed Twitter’s acquisition and proclaimed himself as the company’s “chief twit,” one of the more quirky titles he has bestowed upon himself, the others being the Technoking of Tesla and the Imperator of Mars.
However, Musk, who also leads Tesla and SpaceX (and Starlink) as CEO and has co-founded Neuralink, OpenAI, The Boring Company, and others, said he would step down as head of Twitter if Twitter users vote as such in a poll he posted from his account on December 19, 2022.
57.5% of the 17.5 million+ voted “Yes.”
Musk has previously described Twitter as the “de facto town square” of the world, so there was little doubt that he won’t abide by the public mandate.
The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
It is important to note that Twitter isn’t the same company that Musk acquired. Since coming in, Twitter let go of ~3,700 employees, delisted the company and made it private, instituted some operational changes, and renamed it X Corp.
For instance, Twitter now charges $8 per Twitter Blue subscription, purged legacy blue ticks, and redefined what a blue tick (and ticks in general) means as part of Musk’s monetization plans before he took over. Twitter also brought changes to its platform. In April 2023, the company also made parts of the platform’s source code public.
Musk’s time at Twitter has also been chaotic, considering more than a dozen clients suspended advertising on Twitter and later in November 2022 when the company’s CISO Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran, chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty, and head of trust and safety Yoel Roth resigned over privacy-related differences with the leadership.
Musk’s political antics, restoration of the Twitter account of former president Donald Trump, and accusations on the media being racist, among other things, have also earned him criticism.
In February, at the 2023 World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk said he needs a year to “stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place and the product road map is clearly laid out” before a new CEO is roped in.
See More: Twitter-Funded Bluesky’s Invite-Only Beta Now Has 20,000 Users
Market Reaction to Musk Confirming a New Twitter CEO
Since Musk took over Twitter, Tesla’s share price tanked 51.97% (from $225.09 to $108.1) at its lowest and currently sits at $172.08, 23.55% lower than October 2022 levels.
Musk’s tweet confirming the new CEO came 16 minutes before the NASDAQ closing call. Between those 16 minutes, Tesla’s stock surged 1.95% before settling 1.49% higher at $172.08. Tesla shares rose another 1.55% in after-hours trading.
This is despite Tesla recalling over 1.1 million vehicles in China due to braking defects.
Clearly, Tesla shareholders are glad that Musk will have more time to space at the EV company rather than “fixing Twitter.”
Will Twitter’s new CEO make a difference? Share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you!
Image source: Shutterstock
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