A month back, Elon Musk has been hinting that he no longer wants to be the CEO of the social media platform, Twitter and that he had found his replacement. Linda Yaccarino, who has a tremendous track record being the advertising titan as she held her role as the chairman of advertising sales and client partnership at NBCUniversal.
The official leave of Elon Musk started on Monday as Yaccorino tweeted around 8pm (PT): “It happened - first day in the books!”. Originally scheduled to start around 22nd June, reports say that she would instead takeover more than two weeks before schedule.
Elon, who has only been CEO since last October from when he bought the company for $44 billion said “My role will transition to being executive chai & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops,”. The decision of Musk stepping down came to a conclusion in December as users voted in a poll. Nearly 18 million people voted, and 'yes' received 57.5% of the vote. Musk vowed to follow the outcome.
Yaccarino is tasked with turning Twitter profitable and revitalising its advertising business.
According to an internal presentation acquired by The New York Times, Twitter's US ad revenue is down 59% year on year, and it consistently falls short of weekly expectations by as much as 30%.
Yaccarino's quick start comes after the resignations of two top executives in Twitter's safety section.
The Fight for Breakeven
Yaccarino's first day coincided with a Twitter Spaces livestream event Musk hosted with Democratic presidential candidate and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., following a similar event Musk hosted with Ron DeSantis last month, which was mainly overshadowed by technical issues.
Musk critiqued Twitter's strained relationship with advertisers at the event. Musk told Kennedy that his approach to content control on the social platform had cost Twitter billions of dollars in advertising revenue.
“It’s definitely been extremely difficult,” Musk said. “Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.”
Musk, Kennedy, and tech investor David Sacks convened the Spaces chat, which gathered more than 60,000 listeners at its peak.
Musk acknowledged the financial impact of advertising boycotts on his company, claiming it has been a “huge struggle for Twitter to break even.”
“We’re hoping to break even, but we’re not there yet,” he said.
