Elon Musk named NBCUniversal’s former head of advertising and partnerships, Linda Yaccarino, as his successor as Twitter CEO Friday, confirming earlier reports as the social media company looks to turn around its slumping ad business.
Linda Yaccarino is out at NBC after over a decade.
In an announcement tweet, Musk said Yaccarino will “focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.”
Yaccarino will help “transform this platform into X, the everything app,” Musk vowed, referring to his ambitions to make the social media app into an all-encompassing product spanning mobile payments, messaging and more.
NBC announced Yaccarino’s departure after 12 years at the company earlier Friday without naming a reason, but several outlets reported Yaccarino was the unnamed selection announced Thursday by Musk to begin as Twitter CEO next month.
A 1985 graduate of Penn State, Yaccarino is also a high-ranking member of the World Economic Forum, the organization best-known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland which brings together some of the richest and most influential people on earth. Yaccarino will contend with a shrinking valuation for Twitter, which reportedly now estimates itself to be worth $20 billion, less than half of the $44 billion price tag Musk bought the company for last year. Dragging down Twitter’s valuation is its crumbling relationship with a glut of advertising partners thanks to a variety of changes to the platform, including the removal of free verification badges and a rollback of most content moderation policies. Twitter suffered a “massive decline” in advertising revenue while Musk has been at the helm, the billionaire said in March. Ad sales accounted for 92% of Twitter’s total revenues in 2022’s second quarter, the last period for which the company’s financials are publicly available.
Yaccarino is a “home run hire” for Twitter thanks to her extensive advertising experience, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives as the company fights to regain the crucial ad dollars it’s reportedly lost under Musk.
Shares of Tesla rallied as much as 4% since Musk tweeted Thursday afternoon he found a replacement to become Twitter’s CEO, adding about $15 billion in market value as Musk freed up time to refocus on his role as Tesla’s CEO. Tesla’s gains were wiped out by mid-day Friday amid a broader market downturn.
Here's How Much Tesla Stock Could Gain As Musk Steps Down As Twitter CEO (Forbes)