Elon Musk confirms Linda Yaccarino will be Twitter’s new CEO

12 May, 2023

Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino

Elon Musk has announced his replacement as Twitter’s CEO.

Despite only taking up the role in October, Musk promised late last year that he would step down once he had found “someone foolish enough to take the job”. The decision came after he polled Twitter users over whether he should quit as CEO, to which 57.5 per cent of respondents voted yes.

Yesterday (May 11), Musk revealed he had found someone to take over the reins of the social network, who he said would be starting in around six weeks’ time. He confirmed, as planned, that he would stay at the company in a different role, “being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops [system operations]”.

Earlier today (May 12), he then confirmed in another tweet the new CEO’s identity as Linda Yaccarino. She is set to “focus primarily on business operations”, according to Musk, while he turns his attention to product design and new technology.

Musk also confirmed that a rebrand of Twitter to X was imminent. “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” he concluded.

For the last decade, Yaccarino has worked as chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. She confirmed her departure in a statement hours before she was announced as Twitter’s new CEO.

“It has been an absolute honour to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal and lead the most incredible team,” she said. “We’ve transformed our company and the entire industry.” [via The Independent].

Musk’s time as Twitter’s CEO has been mired in various controversies since his acquisition of the platform. He has fired several top executives at Twitter and half of its staff since he bought the website last October for a staggering $44billon (£36.5bn). Earlier this year, the CEO said the social media platform’s workforce had decreased from 8,000 employees to 2,300 following his acquisition.

Hate speech also reportedly spiked on the site after his takeover, while users were advised to archive their Twitter history after speculation the platform could collapse back in November.

Access to the verified blue tick via Twitter Blue also sparked an influx in parody and fake accounts posing as businesses.

Meanwhile, Musk said last month that Twitter will roll out a new feature that will allow media publishers to “charge users on a per-article basis”.

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