The billionaire did not provide a name, but he did indicate in a tweet that it would be a woman who would be stepping into the role and that she would join the company in about six weeks.
News outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have pointed towards Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s global head of advertising, as the possible mystery CEO.
Yaccarino has worked at NBCUniversal, the entertainment conglomerate behind the NBC TV network and the Universal film studio, for almost 12 years and would now reportedly be in negotiations to join Elon Musk’s firm.
Elon Musk first announced his intention to resign as Twitter’s chief executive in December last year, after agreeing to abide by the result of a Twitter poll where he asked users whether he should resign.
After 57.5 per cent of users voted ‘Yes’, Musk said he would stay on as Twitter CEO until he could find ”someone foolish enough to take the job”. Once he did, the billionaire said he would “just run the software and servers teams”.
Now, the billionaire and Tesla Inc-owner has apparently found a human replacement. He added that he plans to maintain a role within the company’s management, but that his position will transition to that of “exec chair and CTO, overseeing product, software and sysops”.
San Francisco-based Twitter was recently renamed X Corp, according to court filings. Before acquiring the social media company, Musk had tweeted that buying Twitter would speed up his ambition to create an “everything app” called “X”.
Musk took over Twitter in November 2022, after finalising his $44bn (£38bn) takeover of the company. Since then, Musk has overseen a series of controversial changes within the company, including dissolving the company’s board of directors, making significant changes to the platform’s content moderation policies and firing 80 per cent of the company’s workers, as well as a number of additional contractors.
Musk’s turbulent leadership of Twitter has also begun to cause economic concerns for the company, as several advertising firms have paused spending on the platform over concerns about his “absolute free speech” approach.
Shortly after taking over, the billionaire reportedly told Twitter’s remaining workers that the company he just bought could see “net negative cash flow of several billion dollars” in 2023 and “bankruptcy is not out of the question”.
The Twitter saga has also impacted Musk’s other businesses and raised concerns over his management style and his ability to pay interest on the $13bn (£11bn) debt he took on to buy it.
Source: E&T
