PanamaTimes

Friday, Jul 04, 2025

Elon Musk names Linda Yaccarino new Twitter CEO

Elon Musk names Linda Yaccarino new Twitter CEO

Elon Musk has named a new chief executive of Twitter, just over six months after his controversial takeover of the social media company.

The billionaire said Linda Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal, would oversee business operations at the site, which has been struggling to make money.

He said she would start in six weeks.

Mr Musk will remain involved as executive chairman and chief technology officer.

"Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app," he wrote on Twitter, confirming the decision a day after he had stoked speculation by writing that he had found a new boss without revealing their identity.

Mr Musk - who bought the social media platform last year for $44bn - had been under pressure to find someone else to lead the company and refocus his attention on his other businesses, which include electric carmaker Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX.

With fewer than 10% of Fortune 500 tech companies headed by women, Ms Yaccarino will become that rare example of a woman at the top of a major tech firm, after rising steadily through the ranks of some of America's biggest media companies.


Who is Linda Yaccarino?


Ms Yaccarino was raised in an Italian-American family, with a father who was a police officer and a mother who never went to college.

After graduating from Penn State, she worked at Turner Entertainment for 15 years before joining NBCUniversal, where she oversaw roughly 2,000 people, and was involved with the launch of its streaming service.

Her work has been marked by close collaborations with big brands, finding opportunities for product placement and convincing them to advertise alongside television shows - even ones with a reputation for edgy content, such as Sex and the City when it first launched.

She has also built relationships in new media with the likes of Apple News, Snapchat and YouTube.

A 2005 profile in an industry publication portrayed her as a busy, married mother-of-two children, then aged 13 and 9.

"I have absolutely no hobbies," she said at the time.


Business Insider's Claire Atkinson has followed Ms Yaccarino's career for two decades and said her background in advertising could help Twitter, which has seen its ad sales drop sharply since Mr Musk's takeover.

"If Twitter are looking to monetise better than they have been, then that would be the place to start and Linda would be the ideal person to make that happen," the chief media correspondent said.

"She's the kind of person that I can imagine Elon Musk needs," Ms Atkinson added. "She won't be rolled over."

Indeed, her negotiating style within the industry earned her the nickname the "velvet hammer", according to the Wall Street Journal in 2012.

Ms Yaccarino will face the challenge of running a business that has struggled to be profitable, while facing intense scrutiny over how Twitter handles the spread of misinformation and manages hate speech.

When Mr Musk first started discussing his plans for Twitter last year, he said he wanted to reduce the platform's reliance on advertising and make changes to the way it moderated content.

He also said he wanted to expand the site's functions to include payments, encrypted messaging and phone calls, turning it into something he called X.

But Mr Musk courted controversy when he fired thousands of staff upon his takeover, including people who had been tasked with dealing with abusive posts.

He also overhauled the way the service authenticates accounts, charging for blue ticks in a move critics said would facilitate the spread of misinformation.

Some of the changes raised concerns among advertisers, worried about risks to their brands, who subsequently halted spending on the site.

Mr Musk has acknowledged "massive" declines in revenue, though he told the BBC last month that companies were returning.


At an advertising conference last month Ms Yaccarino interviewed Mr Musk and pressed him on what he was doing to reassure firms that their brands would not be exposed to risk.

"The people in this room are your accelerated path to profitability," she said. "But there's a decent bit of sceptics in the room."

There has also been some instant scepticism at Ms Yaccarino's appointment on social media, where many were looking for clues to her politics, which reportedly lean conservative.

Her work for the World Economic Forum, an organisation viewed negatively as "globalist" by those on the right, has not been well-received in some quarters along with her role in a coronavirus vaccination campaign featuring Pope Francis.

Others on the left have questioned her political involvement in a White House sports, fitness and nutrition council under former President Donald Trump.

Mr Musk, who has also put women in senior positions at SpaceX and Tesla, is known to be a notoriously unpredictable and demanding boss.

Even the announcement unfolded in an unusual manner, after media reports sparked by Mr Musk's post that identified Ms Yaccarino appeared to catch her bosses at NBCUniversal off guard.

As of mid-Friday in the US, Ms Yaccarino had still not commented publicly on the move.

Industry watchers will be curious to see how the relationship develops between the New Yorker and the until now hands-on Mr Musk.

Ms Atkinson said the two Twitter executives would be facing "difficult conversations" about how to handle moderation, especially with the 2024 presidential election approaching in the US.

"How long Linda can last under these tricky management situations is anyone's guess," Ms Atkinson said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

PanamaTimes
0:00
0:00
Close
AI Raises Alarms Over Long-Term Job Security
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
OpenAI Secures Multimillion-Dollar AI Contracts with Pentagon, India, and Grab
Brazilian Congress Rejects Lula's Proposed Tax Increase on Financial Transactions
Landslide in Bello, Colombia, Results in Multiple Casualties
Papa Johns pizza surge near the Pentagon tipped off social media before Trump's decisive Iran strike
Juncker Criticizes EU Inaction on Trump Tariffs
Minnesota Lawmaker Melissa Hortman and Husband Killed in Targeted Attack; Senator John Hoffman and Wife Injured
Wreck of $17 Billion San José Galleon Identified Off Colombia After 300 Years
Sole Survivor of Air India Crash Recounts Escape
Coinbase CEO Warns Bitcoin Could Supplant US Dollar Amid Mounting National Debt
UK and EU Reach Agreement on Gibraltar's Schengen Integration
Israeli Finance Minister Imposes Banking Penalties on Palestinians
U.S. Inflation Rises to 2.4% in May Amid Trade Tensions
Trump's Policies Prompt Decline in Chinese Student Enrollment in U.S.
Global Oceans Near Record Temperatures as CO₂ Levels Climb
Trump Announces U.S.-China Trade Deal Covering Rare Earths
Smuggled U.S. Fuel Funds Mexican Cartels Amid Crackdown
Protests Erupt in Los Angeles with Symbolic Flag Burning
Trump Administration Issues New Travel Ban Targeting 12 Countries
Man Group Mandates Full-Time Office Return for Quantitative Analysts
JPMorgan Warns Analysts Against Accepting Future-Dated Job Offers
Builder.ai Faces Legal Scrutiny Amid Financial Misreporting Allegations
Japan Grapples with Rice Shortage Amid Soaring Prices
Goldman Sachs Reduces Risk Exposure Amid Market Volatility
HSBC Chairman Mark Tucker to Return to AIA as Non-Executive Chair
Israel Confirms Arming Gaza Clan to Counter Hamas Influence
Judge Blocks Trump's Ban on International Students at Harvard
Trump Proposes Travel Ban on 'Uncontrolled' Countries
Panama Port Owner Balances US-China Pressures
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Eurozone Inflation Falls Below ECB Target to 1.9%
Call for a New Chapter in Globalisation Emerges
Blackstone and Rivals Diverge on Private Equity Strategy
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Bangkok Ranked World's Top City for Remote Work in 2025
Denmark Increases Retirement Age to 70, Setting a European Precedent
Netanyahu Accuses Western Leaders of 'Emboldening Hamas'
Escalating Trade Tensions and Market Reactions
OnlyFans Reportedly in Talks for $8 Billion Sale
JBS Gains Shareholder Approval for U.S. Stock Listing
Booz Allen Hamilton to Cut 2,500 Jobs Amid Federal Spending Reductions
Trump Signs Executive Orders to Accelerate Nuclear Energy Development
Harvard Temporarily Blocks Trump Administration's International Student Ban
Nippon Steel Forms Partnership with U.S. Steel, Headquarters to Remain in Pittsburgh
Trump Expands Tariff Threats to Apple and Samsung Devices
Oracle and OpenAI Plan $40 Billion Nvidia Chip Purchase for AI Data Center
Trump Threatens 50% Tariff on EU Goods, Markets React
The Daily Debate: The Fall of the Dollar — Strategic Reset or Economic Self-Destruction?
×