Twitter Officially Has A New CEO
According to a recent tweet, Twitter's new CEO Linda Yaccarino officially took the reins at the social media giant on Monday — approximately three weeks earlier than expected. Although an official start date was never disclosed, Twitter owner and interim CEO Elon Musk tweeted that "She will be starting in ~6 weeks!" when the hiring announcement was made in mid-May. Musk himself will assume the role of executive chairman and chief technology officer, "overseeing product, software & sysops."
It happened â€" first day in the books!
Stay tuned…
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) June 6, 2023
A former marketing executive at NBCUniversal, Yaccarino will face the challenge of resuscitating Twitter's ad revenue, which has reportedly fallen 59% year-to-date, according to The New York Times. To that end, one of Yaccarino's first moves was to hire a former colleague from her days at NBCUniversal, Joe Benarroch.
Over the weekend, Benarroch posted a message to his LinkedIn account stating, "Tomorrow, I start a different professional adventure at Twitter, taking on a role focusing on business operations," continuing, "I am looking forward to bringing my experience to Twitter, and to working with the entire team to build Twitter 2.0 together."
Yaccarino will continue Musk's freedom of speech policy
Yaccarino's first day at Twitter was not without some drama. On Monday, Elon Musk hosted environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running against incumbent President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. Although the Twitter Space didn't experience technical difficulties like when Republican Governor Ron DeSantis announced his own presidential bid, providing Kennedy a platform was nonetheless a controversial move due to his anti-vaccine and anti-drugmaker stance.
Last month, Musk told CNBC that, "I'll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it." Seemingly, Yaccarino supports her new boss' attitude regarding freedom of speech, even if it comes at the cost of driving away advertising revenue. Following DeSantis' twitter appearance, Yaccarino tweeted that "Freedom of speech is priceless."
In December 2022, Musk ran a poll on Twitter asking users if should step down as "chief Twit," with 57.5% of respondents voting that he should.