Twitter has a new CEO. The world breathes a sign of relief.
Apart from tarnishing Elon Musk’s reputation for the rest of his otherwise industrious career, it has been a comedy of errors. Not very funny, unless Schadenfreude is your shtick. It has been an error-filled six-month patch that has shown Musk to be petty, impetuous, callous and cold-hearted, as well as a bully and a spoilt billionaire who, amongst others, was angry the US President’s Super Bowl tweet got more engagement than his. He has also smashed Twitter in many ways that are hopefully not irremediable.
He has admitted Twitter is worth half of the $44 billion he paid for it. He has also shed jobs from 8,000 to 1,500, called a BBC reporter a liar in a live interview and turned the poop emoji into a meme.
Fikile Mbabula, the Daffy Duck of South African politics, could do a better job.
Now, as he promised last year, Musk has found someone “foolish enough” to take over as CEO. That person is Linda Yaccarino.
For a decade she was chairman of global advertising and partnerships at media giant NBCUniversal, where she ran a $13 billion business. She is known as the “velvet hammer,” says the Wall Street Journal.
Announcing her appointment, Musk (obviously) tweeted.
I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.
Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app. https://t.co/TiSJtTWuky
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023
He added: “@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology. Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”
What’s next for Twitter?
But, as the WSJ stresses, “Yaccarino would face immediate challenges as CEO, including wooing back advertisers who have typically provided the bulk of Twitter’s revenue”.
Advertising brought in nearly 90% of Twitter’s revenue in 2021, its last listed year. But after Musk bought it and took it private, its revenue plummeted 40% year-over-year in December, the paper reported.
It also points out that 37 of the top 100 advertisers didn’t advertise in the first quarter of this year, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Another 24 brands dropped their monthly spend by 80%, it added.
Millions of people will be adding the word Yaccarino to their Microsoft Word dictionaries, as I had to. She’s going to be a household name – at least for those of us who still hope that Twitter can be saved. Saved from Musk first, then rebuilt as an actual business. It was always a dysfunctional company, with too many chefs spoiling the broth, and thousands of engineers patching its cumbersome code.
When Yaccarino interviewed Musk at an advertising conference last month, she said “Elon has committed to being accessible to everyone for continual feedback”. Talk about talking yourself into a job, including her later comment that “If freedom of speech, as he says, is the bedrock of this country, I’m not sure there’s anyone in this room who could disagree with that.”
The good news is they are having a tech-bro-vrou-mance and are both Trump supporters. What could go wrong?
- This article first appeared in the Financial Mail.