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Twitter CEO Elon Musk, on Thursday (May 11) said that he has found the new chief executive for the microblogging platform and that she will be starting in about six weeks. However, he did not name the candidate. Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal citing sources said NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino was in talks for the top job at Twitter. 

This also comes as Musk had previously said that he would reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find someone to run the social media platform. While he did not name the candidate, his tweet indicated that the new CEO would be a woman and will begin her role in six weeks.

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"My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops," said Musk, in a tweet. 

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The move seems to be in a bid to reduce the concerns of Tesla investors, who have been increasingly worried about the time that Musk has been spending to turn around Twitter. After the announcement, Tesla Inc shares jumped 2.4 per cent. 

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After Musk took over the microblogging platform back in October he fired several top executives including Twitter's CEO Parag Agrawal and went on to fire half of the company's staff in November. In the same month, he was also set to serve as the CEO of Twitter after he bought the social media platform for $44 billion. 

ALSO READ | Elon Musk posts satirical picture of Twitter’s ‘new CEO’, announces a leadership change by end of 2023

Musk recently made the tech firm part of an "X" shell corporation, getting rid of the Twitter company name but continuing to use it for the platform. He has also recently talked about using Twitter to build an all-purpose "X" application that combines messages, payments and more.

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Who could Musk be talking about?

Hours after Musk's tweet indicated that the new CEO would be a woman, a report by Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the situation said Yaccarino was in talks for the top post.

News agency Reuters also said that Yaccarino could be his choice to lead Twitter, citing a Silicon Valley executive and a former Hollywood executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to media reports, Yaccarino who is the advertising sales executive at NBCUniversal, interviewed Musk at a conference last year in Miami, Florida, during which she lauded his work ethic. 

She has been with NBCUniversal for more than a decade now and as head of advertising sales, she was key in the launch of NBCU's Peacock streaming service. 

ALSO READ | Elon Musk jokes his dog is new Twitter CEO; calls for AI regulatory body

The announcement also comes months after a Twitter poll posted by Musk where 57.5 per cent of respondents called on him to stop leading the social media after which he had said that he would step down as soon as he found someone "foolish enough to take the job."

Since the billionaire entrepreneur's take over he has made some major changes to the company and its platform. Last month, in an interview with BBC, Musk said that Twitter before him was being run "like a non-profit," and that without a "drastic action", it had just "four months to live".

In the same interview, he also stopped the BBC interviewer to say that he is "no longer the CEO of Twitter." Subsequently, when asked about who is the CEO of Twitter, he names his pet dog Floki, a Shiba Inu, the canine breed that symbolises Dogecoin.  

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