What Musk's appointment of Yaccarino as CEO means for Twitter

The billionaire owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, unveiled Linda Yaccarino as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the microblogging site on Friday, May 12, 2023.

This came barely 24 hours after Musk announced that he had hired a female who will step into the Twitter CEO role in about six weeks.

"Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks! My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.

"Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks! My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops," he tweeted on Thursday.

What does this mean for Twitter's future?

Yaccarino's appointment may have pointed to the direction Musk is trying to steer the platform. Since he acquired Twitter last October, the social media platform has suffered a massive dip in revenue which Musk himself has attributed to advertisers' refusal to patronise the platform.

It is therefore safe to conclude that Musk's introduction of radical changes to Twitter blew up in his face as advertisers feared his liberalisation stance could make their ads appear next to inappropriate content.

This was also not helped by his decision to grant general amnesty to suspended accounts that didn’t break the law or engaged in particularly egregious spam.

After a poll he conducted on his handle on November 23, 2022, 72.4% of the more than 3.16 million voters voted in favour of the amnesty prompting him to say "Amnesty begins next week."

Musk has since restored some controversial accounts including the satirical website Babylon Bee, comedian, Kathy Griffin, while Donald Trump also had his account restored after a similar poll.

However, in a move to diversify revenue sources, Musk introduced Twitter Blue, a subscription feature that costs users $8 per month to verify their accounts.

But this has also recorded limited success as Independent researcher, Travis Brown, who has been tracking the number of Twitter Blue subscribers over time, estimated there were 619,858 customers as of April 30.

Besides the low rate of subscription, the product has also encouraged impersonation by scammers who imitate major brands thereby further pushing away prospective advertisers.

This is where Yaccarino comes in!

Yaccarino is joining Twitter after her recent resignation as NBCUniversal’s chair of global advertising and partnerships. 

She's credited for modernising the advertising business at the Comcast Corp entertainment and media division and Musk would be banking on her decade-long experience and expertise at NBCUniversal to lure back brands to the firm loaded with debt among other challenges.

The billionaire's announcement also pointed towards this direction as he said Yaccarino would help build an “everything app,”

Must said, "I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter! @LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology. Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app."