NBCUniversal veteran could replace Elon Musk as Twitter CEO: Report

May 12, 2023 Alex Rustok

Reports from major media outlets have suggested that NBCUniversal’s chair of global advertising and partnerships, Linda Yaccarino, could follow Elon Musk as the next chief executive officer at Twitter.

According to a May 12 report from Axios citing people familiar with the situation, Yaccarino will leave her position at NBCUniversal, where she has worked for more than 11 years. She is reportedly in talks to become the CEO of Twitter.

On May 11, Musk announced that he would be stepping down as CEO to become the social media company’s executive chair and chief technology officer. He did not specifically name his replacement, providing no details other than the fact she would be a woman and start within roughly six weeks.

Whoever assumes the key leadership role at Twitter would have a major influence on international discourse and digital assets. Yaccarino’s tweets include some praising Musk’s appearances in interviews and discussing how the social media platform handles tweets containing hate speech and calls for violence. In April, the NBCUniversal veteran interviewed Musk at a Florida conference, where the two discussed Twitter’s policies.

Related: Elon Musk’s ‘top priority’ for Twitter includes cutting down on crypto scam tweets

During Musk’s time as CEO since taking over the platform in October 2022, he fired key members of the company’s executive team and phased out the platform’s legacy verification system in favor of various paid checkmarks. He has also impacted the price of Dogecoin (DOGE) by briefly changing Twitter’s logo to the memecoin’s dog symbol and caused the price of Milady nonfungible tokens to surge after tweeting a meme on the NFT.

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