Elon Musk has appointed top ad executive Linda Yaccarino to run Twitter on a daily basis as he attempts to turn around the faltering platform he purchased for $44 billion last year.
Yaccarino is a well-known advertising executive who resigned from NBCUniversal “effective immediately” on Friday, amid speculation that she may succeed the erratic entrepreneur as CEO of Twitter.
Twitter is fighting to regain its footing following Musk’s contentious takeover, which saw him fire thousands of employees and reintroduce far-right and controversial characters to the network, driving away its highest-paying advertisers.
Musk teased Yaccarino’s employment on Thursday, claiming in a tweet that he had chosen a woman to replace him as CEO of Twitter and its parent company, the newly renamed X Corporation, but did not divulge her name.
Yaccarino left the firm that controls NBC, Universal, and Telemundo, where she had worked since 2011, just weeks after interviewing Musk at a marketing conference in Miami.
When Yaccarino asked Musk how things were doing since the acquisition, Musk said, “It’s going nicely…It’s enjoyable….Sometimes it’s a train crash.”
Yaccarino will face an uphill battle in luring back major sponsors that are wary of being associated with conspiracy theorists and far-right content creators who Musk urged to return to Twitter.
Yaccarino’s employment as a major member of the US media establishment surprised that audience, with her senior job at the World Economic Forum receiving significant attention.
Yaccarino “is a vaccine-pushing, pro mask-wearing, WEF globalist,” wrote conservative website Outkick.
In a tweet, Musk said he would remain in charge of design and technology at Twitter, with Yaccarino focusing primarily on business operations and turning Twitter into an “everything app” called X.
Musk’s association with the letter X dates back to 1999, when he was a co-founder of X.com, an online bank that was purchased and then became PayPal.
He has also wished to create a “everything app” fashioned after China’s WeChat, which serves as a Twitter-like social media platform as well as texting and mobile payments.
