It’s official: Musk announces Linda Yaccarino as new Twitter CEO; Tesla shares rise

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Twitter's owner Elon Musk on Friday officially announced Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of the social media platform. 

Taking to Twitter to officially announce Linda's joining, Musk stated, "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." 

It is interesting to note that even though Linda Yaccarino will be the new CEO, Musk will still continue to handle Twitter's product design and new technology. “My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software and sysops," Musk had earlier tweeted.

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Meanwhile, newly appointed CEO Yaccarino will primarily focus on business operations. 

On Thursday, Musk had stated that he has found a new CEO for the microblogging platform. He had stated that she will start working in around six weeks. However, Musk had not named the candidate in the earlier tweet. A report by Wall Street Journal had hinted that NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino was in talks with Musk for the top job. 

The new change comes at a time when Musk had announced that he will be reducing the time he has been devoting to Twitter and will eventually appoint someone to run the social media platform. 

The move appears to be aimed at reducing the concerns of Tesla investors who have been lately worried about the time Musk has been dedicating to running Twitter. After the announcement of the new CEO, the shares of Tesla increased by 2.4 per cent. 

Musk had bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion and indicated that he will remain in charge of the platform for a limited time to complete the organisational overhaul which he believed was needed for the company to grow. 

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In December, Musk had asked his followers on Twitter if he should step down from the position of CEO, and 57.5 per cent had responded with a 'yes'. The billionaire had stated that he will remain executive chairman after the transition.

After taking over the microblogging platform in October, Musk had fired various top executives which included Twitter's CEO Parag Agrawal and reduced the staff of the company to half by November.