Twitter's getting a new CEO and it might be this advertising exec

(Image credit: Future)

Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk says that he is going to stay true to his word and step down as the head of the company he bought for $44 billion in 2022.

While Musk will still be the owner, he says he'll be handing over the CEO title to someone new in around six weeks or so. The move comes after Musk ran a poll in December 2022 that asked whether he should step aside. More than 57% of the 15.8 million voters said that he should. Now, six months later, it's happening.

Musk has so far refused to say who will be taking the top job, but one name has already taken its place at the top of the list — and it's one that could help Twitter find new ways to make money from ads.

It's happening

While some had wondered whether Musk would actually step down, it seems that he is indeed doing so — with the Wall Street Journal reporting that Linda Yaccarino will be the one to take over.

Linda Yaccarino is NBCUniversal's current head of advertising and has been with the company for more than a decade. In her time there Yaccarino "has been an industry advocate for finding better ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising," the report notes. "As head of NBCU’s advertising sales, she was key in the launch of the company’s ad-supported Peacock streaming service."

It doesn't take too much imagination to see why Musk might find Yaccarino to be someone worth taking a look at. However, it'll be interesting to see how a possible renewed focus on ads will jive with Twitter Blue's feature that reduces the number of ads shown to subscribers.

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.May 11, 2023

Musk says that he will still be executive chair at Twitter while also acting as CTO "overseeing product, software & sysops."

As for how this pans out from here remains to be seen. But with Tesla shareholders already voicing concerns that Twitter is a distraction for their own CEO this will surely be good news for them.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.