Things have not gone well for billionaire Elon Musk with one of his strongest bets of the last year: the acquisition of Twitter, perhaps the most popular social network on the planet, of which he will soon cease to be its director, at the request of most of its own employees. In his replacement would come Linda Yaccarino, executive of NBCUniversalas announced by the Wall Street Journal, who would be in talks to assume the reins of the company.
(Also read: After the resignation of Elon Musk, Twitter will be led by a woman)
The list of mistakes that have put Musk in trouble, from when he took charge of what he himself called ‘the digital town square’ It is extensive and would be the main reason why hundreds of his collaborators (57 percent) voted in favor of his departure from the Twitter address, in a survey promoted by the magnate himself. But also, the person responsible for the company having lost half of its value, which went from the 44,000 million dollars paid at the time to only 20,000 million today.
Musk became Twitter’s largest shareholder on April 4, 2022 and he was immediately invited to be part of its board of directors, but in his mind there was already an idea that would generate a lot of controversy: freedom of expression on the social network.
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The landing of the new owner of said social network did not start well. He promptly fired three key players in the organization: Parag Agrawale, chief executive; Ned Sega, CFO, and Sean Edgett, General Counsel.
They would not be the only ones, it would also leave 80 percent of the personnel that made up the company’s payroll unemployed upon arrival, reducing it to only 1,500 collaborators.
Not only has the firm lost advertising revenue by up to 75 percent, but its stock market value has plummeted since the mogul went out of business a year ago.
Nothing, it seems, has gone right for Musk, who will go on to perform other functions within the organization, while the reins of the company will soon be assumed by a woman. Without the support of his collaborators, the tycoon will have no alternative but to hand over his dismissal letter when the time comes.
The replacement
As has been reported, NBCUniversal’s head of publicity, Linda Yaccarino, is the strongest candidate to straighten out what Musk unraveled from an increasingly consolidated network before the purchase a year ago.
Elon Musk, the owner and chief executive of Twitter, said in a tweet on Thursday that he had hired a new chief executive, without disclosing his identity. “It will start in about six weeks,” he noted.
He also warned that in the new structure he reserves a significant number of functions for himself: the executive presidency, the head of technology, the supervision of products, the software and systems operator.
Yaccarino, NBCU’s president of global advertising and partnerships, has worked at NBCU for more than a decade. and as NBCU’s head of ad sales, she was instrumental in launching the company’s ad-supported streaming service Peacock, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The media also points out that Yaccarino’s nickname is: “velvet hammer”, due to his harsh negotiation tactics. Last month, at a conference in Miami Beach, Yaccarino interviewed Musk and asked him about his Twitter view.
In 2021, the year before Musk took over the social network and took it private, advertising accounted for nearly 90 percent of the company’s revenue. But after that things changed dramatically: Of the top 100 advertisers on Twitter before Musk bought the company, 37 spent nothing on online advertising in the first quarter of this year, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, while 24 other brands cut their average monthly ad spend on Twitter by 80 percent or more.
Today, the news that Musk will step aside his Twitter responsibilities was concentrated among investors, as after his tweet about the search for a new CEO for Twitter, shares of Tesla (another of the companies owned by Musk ) soared and closed up 2 percent.
*With information from agencies
