Elon Musk names advertising executive Linda Yaccarino as new Twitter CEO

Twitter owner Elon Musk announced Friday that he had selected advertising and media executive Linda Yaccarino to be the social media company's next CEO.

In a tweet, Musk said he was "excited to welcome" Yaccarino, adding that she will "focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology." Musk said he was looking forward to working with Yaccarino on what he described as the "everything app," X — an attempt to build a social platform akin to China's WeChat, NPR reported.

Musk had previously announced he was stepping down as CEO the day before, but had declined to specifically name his replacement.

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Yaccarino is a media industry mainstay who had served as chair of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, working her way up the ladder after joining the company in 2011. After it was reported by The Wall Street Journal that Yaccarino was in contention for the job at Twitter, NBCUniversal announced they were immediately parting ways with her, just hours before Musk's tweet.

Given Yaccarino's prior industry background, it is likely that Musk chose her to help revamp the platform's advertisers after major companies pulled out of Twitter in 2022 amidst Musk's controversial handling of the site. Joe Marchese, the former head of ad sales at the Fox Networks Group, told The New York Times that Yaccarino "has one of the biggest jobs in advertising, and the ad market is as hard as it's ever been."

This past April, Yaccarino and Musk hosted a discussion about Twitter during a panel billed as "Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships." In what was perhaps a preview of Yaccarino's Twitter tenure, she told Musk that brands need "protection for their ad campaigns," Variety reported, and also him advertisers "have a challenge with your points of view, your opinions, and [they're] still holding back."