Yaccarino’s Struggle to Lead X as Musk’s Shadow Looms

Yaccarino’s Struggle to Lead X as Musk’s Shadow Looms 

Yaccarino’s Struggle to Lead X as Musk’s Shadow Looms

X’s Loss of Brand Safety and Revenue : 

As the CEO of X since June, Linda Yaccarino is the official leader of the company. However, Elon Musk, the founder, owner, CTO, and avid user of X, still dominates the company’s direction and culture. 

Yaccarino’s success may depend on how well she can balance Musk’s vision and her own authority.

How Elon Musk overshadows Linda Yaccarino at X:

Musk’s voice is louder than Yaccarino’s at X. In a recent staff meeting, Musk spoke more than twice as much as Yaccarino—3,735 words versus 1,833. Some parts of the meeting sounded like Yaccarino asking Musk about his plans for an all-in-one app, rather than a CEO sharing their own strategy.


Yaccarino’s Struggle to Lead X as Musk’s Shadow Looms : 

Yaccarino, the CEO of X, has been trying to keep up with Musk’s constant updates and changes to the platform. She often reposts Musk’s tweets or those from the X official account on her own X profile.

However, Musk seems to have the final say on everything that happens on X, leaving little room for Yaccarino to exercise her leadership.
“Her tenure and success were always going to hinge on how much Musk let her take charge and make decisions,” says Jasmine Enberg, a social media analyst at Insider Intelligence, a market research firm.

 “But Musk never stepped back, and he still appears to be the one calling the shots.” X did not reply to a request for comment.

X’s Declining Value and Advertiser Relations : 

Yaccarino was hired by X for her expertise in global advertising at NBCUniversal. 

Enberg says that this was a sign that Twitter needed to restore its relationship with advertisers, who accounted for 90 percent of the company’s revenue when Musk bought it. 

X is now valued at $19 billion, less than half of the $44 billion that Musk paid for it a year ago.

X’s Loss of Brand Safety and Revenue : 

When Yaccarino became the CEO of X, Musk had already fired almost half of the company, including the teams that were responsible for removing hateful and violent content from the platform. 

This kind of brand safety work is essential for making a platform appealing to advertisers. To make things worse, Musk allowed previously banned users to return to the platform. 

Twitter Blue, the subscription service, barely made any impact on replacing the revenue lost from advertisers. According to the Wall Street Journal, X’s earnings had dropped by 40 percent by March—three months before Yaccarino even started. 

That number is now even more dismal, says Enberg. “We’re now expecting X’s ad revenues to fall by 54 percent this year, which is an unprecedented drop for any social platform,” she says.



Content Source Courtesy : https://www.wired.com/story/linda-yaccarino-elon-musk-x/