Elon Musk appoints Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new boss
NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino was preparing to interview Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, onstage at a conference last month when she received an email from a colleague in the advertising industry.
Rob Norman, former director of advertising giant WPP, wanted to know if Ms. Yaccarino had seen the op-ed he wrote after Musk took over Twitter last year. Mr Norman’s column discussed the tech billionaire’s amplification of misinformation on Twitter and its chilling effect on advertisers.
Ms. Yaccarino said she had such concerns and intended to raise such concerns, Mr. Norman said. But the main focus of her conversation with Mr. Musk would be on something else: his efforts to transform the social network into “Twitter 2.0”.
Now Ms. Yaccarino will be the face of Twitter 2.0. Mr Musk said on Friday that he has selected Ms Yaccarino, 60, to become the company’s CEO. Hours earlier, NBCUniversal had announced that Ms. Yaccarino would be leaving, effective immediately, without saying where she was going.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO,” Mr. Musk tweeted. He said she would focus primarily on business operations, while he would continue to work on product design and technology.
By selecting Ms. Yaccarino, Mr. Musk is signaling what he prioritizes at Twitter: the company’s advertising business, rather than its social media savvy. Ms. Yaccarino has been one of Madison Avenue’s power brokers for decades. And Twitter, which derives most of its revenue from advertising, is struggling to grow that business, especially after Musk terrified advertisers last year.
“Linda is a force,” said Joe Marchese, former head of advertising sales at Fox Networks Group, where he competed with Ms. Yaccarino for marketing dollars. “She has one of the biggest jobs in advertising, and the advertising market is tougher than ever.”
Still, Ms. Yaccarino will have to do more than fight Twitter’s ad problems. The San Francisco company has been severely downsized since Mr Musk cut 75 percent of its workforce and struggled with expertise gaps and technical glitches. Twitter is also weighed down by a $13 billion debt it took on to enable Mr. Musk to buy the company.
Most importantly, Ms. Yaccarino would have to deal with an erratic and unpredictable boss in the form of Mr. Musk. Mr Musk, 51, has a track record of firing executives who fail to meet his goals. He sometimes tweets news about his companies without warning, including electric car maker Tesla. And as owner of Twitter, Mr. Musk retains absolute power in the company.
Lou Paskalis, a longtime advertising executive and friend of Ms. Yaccarino, likened her move to Twitter to a “step in the lion’s mouth”.
“With her status in the industry as probably one of the most loved and trusted people on the revenue side, I wonder why she would expose herself to that kind of potential reputational risk,” he said. “If she fails the role, it’s likely there’s no way Twitter will survive as an ad-supported platform.”
Ms. Yaccarino did not respond to requests for comment, but said in NBCUniversal’s statement that working at the company “has been an absolute honor.”
This is an evolving news item and will be updated.
John Koblin contributed reporting from New York.