Elon Musk Announces NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino to Become New CEO of Twitter

Elon Musk on Friday took to Twitter to announce the title of the brand new Twitter CEO. As his tweets confirmed, NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino has been employed to take over Musk’s function because the CEO of the social media firm. Sharing about her job tasks at Twitter, Musk talked about that her she is going to take care of enterprise operations, whereas engaged on reworking the social media platform into X, the all the things app. The billionaire, alternatively, will take care of the product design and new expertise. 

Yaccarino is the former NBCUniversal promoting chief, who modernized the Comcast leisure and media division’s promoting enterprise and had been in talks for the job earlier than NBC introduced her departure Friday morning.

Since Musk acquired Twitter in October, advertisers have fled the platform, nervous that their adverts may seem subsequent to inappropriate content material after the corporate misplaced practically 80 % of employees. Musk earlier this 12 months acknowledged that Twitter suffered an enormous decline in advert income.

Twitter’s “trajectory will instantly take a 180-degree flip” underneath her management, mentioned Lou Paskalis, a long-time advert business govt and CEO of AJL Advisory, a advertising consultancy.

Musk axed 1000’s of workers, rushed the launch of a subscription product that allowed scammers to impersonate main manufacturers and suspended customers with whom he disagreed.

“I feel (Yaccarino) has climbed each mountain she may at NBCU and did it impeccably effectively. And there isn’t any larger problem than restoring order at Twitter,” he mentioned.

Yaccarino couldn’t be reached for remark.

Her exit is one other large blow to NBCUniversal. Last month, NBC dad or mum Comcast mentioned NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell was leaving after acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with a girl within the firm, following a grievance that prompted an investigation.

Advertising President Mark Marshall will step in as interim chairman of NBCUniversal’s promoting and partnerships group. Marshall was named president of advert gross sales and partnerships in 2018, overseeing NBC’s broadcast leisure, sports activities and superior promoting gross sales.

Yaccarino’s exit comes at a tough time for NBCUniversal, which is making ready for its annual upfront presentation to advertisers on Monday at Radio City Music Hall.

Yaccarino joined NBCU in 2011, after 15 years at Turner Entertainment, and has been credited with taking the community’s advert gross sales operation into the digital period.

As broadcast tv audiences migrated to streaming, she took to the stage at Radio City Music Hall final 12 months to inform advertisers their model messages weren’t an afterthought. She mentioned NBCUniversal integrated adverts in its Peacock streaming service from the outset.

“Twitter wants credibility with the promoting group,” mentioned Greg Kahn, chief govt of GK Digital Ventures media consultancy. “Linda has demonstrated her belief, her revolutionary nature of bringing new companions to the desk and a deep bench of relationships.”

Musk, the CEO of electrical automobile maker Tesla, accomplished his buy of Twitter in October. He mentioned in December that he would step apart as CEO as soon as he discovered “somebody silly sufficient to take the job.”

On Thursday, Musk tweeted that he had discovered a CEO with out naming Yaccarino. One individual near Yaccarino mentioned Musk’s tweet might effectively have accelerated the timetable for her to affix Twitter, which might be a balm to Tesla shareholders.

Shares of Tesla have been down 1.3 % on Friday, as analysts commented {that a} CEO rent would enable Musk to focus on the EV enterprise. Comcast shares have been little modified.

© Thomson Reuters 2023