The former head of advertising at NBCUniversal, Linda Yaccarino, will take over as the new chief executive officer of Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk announced on Friday as the social media platform seeks to reverse a plunge in advertisement revenues.
“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk tweeted. “Linda Yaccarino will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design and new technology. Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”
In another tweet, Musk said that the new chief executive will start in six weeks.
Yaccarino had joined NBCUniversal in 2011. She has been known for taking the network’s ad sales operation into the digital era, reported Reuters.
Musk had taken over Twitter in October after completing his $44 billion (over Rs 3,36,910 crore) purchase. Soon after taking over the social platform, the billionaire removed Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
Since then Twitter has fired many of its employees. On November 5, Musk had laid off 50% of its workers across the world. In the fourth round of job cuts in February, the billionaire fired at least 200 employees, including the company’s product manager and chief executive of Twitter Payments, Esther Crawford.
Musk has said that he wants to stabilise the organisation to make sure it is in a financially healthy place.
“I think [Yaccarino] has climbed every mountain she could at NBCU and did it impeccably well,” he said on Friday, reported Reuters. “And there’s no greater challenge than restoring order at Twitter.”
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