Twitter CEO Elon Musk hands over his post in June
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is putting the head job at Twitter in the hands of an advertising expert. He welcomes Linda Yaccarino as the new boss, Musk announced in a tweet on Friday. The new CEO of the short message service most recently headed the advertising business at media giant NBC Universal.
Yaccarino's decades of experience could help Twitter bring calm to its relationship with key advertisers, whom Musk scared off with his erratic management style. In the future, he himself wants to take care of products and software as chief technology officer. It remains to be seen how much freedom of action the new manager will have alongside Musk.
Musk had announced the day before that he would soon be stepping down as chief executive. A successor has been found and will take over in around six weeks, he wrote in a tweet. He did not mention a name. Media reports quickly surfaced that it was Yaccarino who was negotiating with Twitter. NBC Universal announced Friday that she was leaving the company, effective immediately.
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Yaccarino was responsible for the global advertising business at NBC Universal. The Group owns, among others, the U.S. broadcasting chain NBC and the streaming service Peacock. Before that, she worked for a long time in Warner's TV business. NBC Universal recently entered into a deal with Twitter around footage from the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Variety wrote, citing Yaccarino's entourage, that she had long expressed admiration for Musk. In mid-April, she interviewed him on stage at an industry conference, showing sympathy for his views and stated goals.
Musk bought Twitter in October for around 44 billion dollars, fired all top managers and took over the leadership himself. After that, advertising revenues - Twitter's central source of money - collapsed. Many advertisers feared a negative environment for their products on the service. In December, following controversy over his leadership style, Musk had Twitter users vote on whether he should vacate the chief executive post - and a good 57 percent of the 17.5 million participants were in favor.
After that, nothing happened at first, although Musk had assured that he would abide by the outcome of the vote. So he said he first had to find someone "crazy" enough to accept the job offer. (SDA)
