Elon Musk Hired Linda Yaccarino as New CEO of Twitter

Elon Musk said he has hired Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s former head of advertising, as the new CEO of Twitter. Musk gave up the top job at the social media company he bought for $44bn in October. He previously signalled his time in the position would be temporary.

Without naming a successor, he wrote on Twitter on Thursday: “Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!”

He made the official announcement on Friday, writing on Twitter that Yaccarino, “will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology”.

Elon Musk Hired Linda Yaccarino as New CEO of Twitter

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“Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” he wrote. It seems like he is quite hopeful to transform Twitter into an all-purpose platform incorporating messaging, payments and commerce.

NBCUniversal on Friday morning announced that Yaccarino would be leaving the company “effective immediately”. Her abrupt exit comes just a few days before NBCUniversal’s annual “upfronts” presentation — the biggest event of the year in television advertising.

Yaccarino had been rumoured as a candidate to take over as chief executive of NBCUniversal after the departure of Jeff Shell last month. She also said on Friday: “It has been an absolute honour to be part of Comcast NBCUniversal.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported she was in discussions for the Twitter job.

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