The billionaire entrepreneur mentioned on Thursday that he had chosen an unnamed lady to switch him as chief government at Twitter. He added that she would begin in six weeks, with Musk’s function transitioning to being government chairman and chief expertise officer.
Moments after his bombshell announcement, experiences started to swirl about who can be his successor, with one identify continuously popping up: Linda Yaccarino. As a seasoned digital promoting government, the 60-year-old media trade veteran feels like a great candidate for the function.
She has additionally exalted Musk’s takeover of Twitter, claiming that it is best to by no means guess in opposition to a pioneer in electrical automobiles and House journey.
Throughout his quick time on the reins, Musk gutted Twitter’s workforce, fired its government staff, and dissolved the board of administrators. Considerably for customers, he has additionally taken a extra lax strategy to content material moderation, restoring banned accounts, and limiting the attain of miscreants.
The modifications have inevitably confirmed divisive, garnering applause from free-speech advocates, whereas spooking advertisers who don’t need their adverts to seem subsequent to hate speech or misinformation. Precipitating a drop in advert gross sales, Musk has tried to shift Twitter towards subscriptions by charging for options that have been beforehand free, like verification.
Now, Musk is making good on his promise to step down as Twitter CEO following a ballot asking whether or not he ought to go away or not. Odds are that Yaccarino will take over his function, and chances are high her principal responsibility can be to shepherd advertisers again to the platform.
Who’s Linda Yaccarino?
Linda Yaccarino is the chairwoman of International Promoting and Partnerships at US media large NBCUniversal. She is among the strongest girls within the media trade, and has been on the forefront of TV and digital promoting for greater than a decade. Her identify typically comes up when a media conglomerate is on the hunt for a brand new CEO.
At NBC Common, she has held a wide range of management roles, and is at present chargeable for overseeing all of its promoting gross sales, together with linear TV, digital, and streaming.
Yaccarino is seen as a powerhouse in digital promoting, serving to to generate greater than $100 billion (£379 bn) in advert gross sales throughout her 12 years at NBCUniversal. Throughout that point, she’s had an in depth relationship with Twitter, and the information publishers that present the content material that retains customers glued to the platform.
Extra lately, Yaccarino has praised Musk amid the cacophony of criticism over his dealing with of Twitter. As lately as final month, Yaccarino interviewed Musk onstage at a media convention, the place they mentioned what the longer term held for entrepreneurs on the social-media platform.
In 2021, she mentioned that she was “excited” about Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. She additionally mentioned that she believed Musk can “make Twitter a greater place”.
At the same time as Musk was spooking advertisers together with his feedback about remodeling Twitter right into a haven for free-speech absolutists, Yaccarino was nonetheless in his nook. Two weeks after Musk’s takeover, Yaccarino mentioned she had been in contact with Twitter management. She additionally declared that, “Twitter is the one, No. 1 greatest” accomplice for content material distribution for NBCUniversal.
NBCU has vital partnerships with Twitter: the broadcaster lately renewed its deal to host content material from the 2024 Olympics on the platform. Yaccarino additionally lately tweeted that Musk ought to convey again Twitter’s reside video function, Periscope, calling it “an concept for our new partnership”.
