From Musk To Yaccarino: A Look At Twitter's ‘Chaotic' Legacy

Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal ad executive, took over as the new Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Twitter on June 6, amid reports of decline in Twitter's ad revenue by 59%. Of all the updates that have been popping on our feeds since Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, this update is probably the much awaited one. 

Yaccarino, who has a career spanning several decades, has turned to the Twitter headquarters, after working at NBCUniversal for over 11 years. "I've long been inspired by Elon Musk's vision to create a brighter future. Now, I'm excited to help bring that vision to Twitter and transform the business together," Yaccarino wrote on LinkedIn last month.

Towards Twitter 2.0

According to Musk, Yaccarino would primarily be focusing on business operations, while he plans to focus on product design & new technology. 

"It happened - first day in the books!" newly appointed Twitter Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino wrote on Tuesday, June 6. Joe Benarroch, who has previously worked with Yaccarino at NBCUniversal has also joined the business operations team at Twitter to "build Twitter 2.0 together." Musk holds ambitious aspirations for the platform, aiming to transform it into "X, the everything app."

Musk, who would now be transitioning to his role as "exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops," has already made a lot happen at Twitter in the last few months. Here's how modifications on the platform impacted its employees, users and business since Musk's acquisition.

Layoffs, Twitter Blue, & More

Soon after Musk acquired Twitter on October 28 last year for $44 billion, he fired the top executives (including the then CEO Parag Agrawal) along with almost half of his staff within days, rolled back work from home policy, and warned the employees of the "difficult times ahead".

From the initial days of his takeover itself, troubles had begun to surface. On November 4, Musk expressed his concern over Twitter's significant decline in revenue, attributing it to pressure from activist groups impacting advertisers. According to him, no alterations in content moderation policies were made. Later, in his first address to the employees, he spoke about the possibility of bankruptcy if the platform doesn't start generating "more cash". 

Next, in December, Twitter relaunched (after the initial failed launch in November) its much anticipated Blue subscription, a paid service that added a blue checkmark to users' account and offered early access to select features, like edit, longer tweets up to 10,000 characters, and more. The controversial and much debated service at $8/month resulted in the rise of several impersonators. However, Musk continued to transform the platform and push the Blue service in the months that followed.

In February 2023, he announced that Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads. But only if the creator is a Twitter Blue subscriber. Finally, after months of speculations and announcements, on April 20 Twitter removed legacy verified blue ticks from all accounts. Only those users who have actively subscribed to Twitter Blue are eligible to receive the blue checkmark. Despite the massive move, Twitter couldn't successfully turn "legacy" accounts to Blue subscribers as many refused to opt for the service. Musk however, continued to try to push the users by employing new revenue generation features such as "subscription", prioritized rankings, and what not.

While Elon Musk continues to hold the title of the richest person, Twitter, unfortunately, does not reflect the same level of financial success at present. According to Fidelity Fund, an investment firm, Twitter is now worth one-third of what Musk purchased it for. Musk acquired the company for $44bn, but his investment in Twitter is currently valued at $8.8 billion.

This isn't the first but third time that the valuation of Twitter has fallen since Musk's takeover. Fidelity initially decreased the value of its stake in Twitter to 44% of the purchase price in November last year. This was followed by additional markdowns in December and February.

Aggravating Twitter's challenges, Twitter's US ad sales have gone down by 59 percent compared to the previous year, according to The New York Times. Based on the report published on June 5, Twitter's advertising revenue in the United States was $88 million from April 1 to the first week of May. Since Elon Musk took over, there have been indications of declining ad revenue on Twitter. Bloomberg had also reported previously, that the spending from the leading advertisers had drastically reduced by 89% since Musk's takeover.

What next?

Musk's term can easily be called "chaotic" and now that he plans to shift his focus towards Tesla, Linda Yaccarino could play a pivotal role in Twitter's business approach hereon. We couldn't get a quote from Twitter about its further plan, but do hope that the removal of the automated "poop" emoji response for media queries is slightly high on Yaccarino's agenda.