Elon Musk is finally out as Twitter’s CEO. On Monday, his replacement—former NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino—said she had taken over as the bird site’s chief executive.
“It happened — first day in the books!” she wrote. “Stay tuned…”
Yaccarino has yet to speak on her new role, making it unclear how she intends on leading Twitter. But she now faces the tough task of luring advertisers back to the social media platform. The company’s ad sales recently plunged 59% year over year, according to The New York Times, when advertising generally makes up 90% of Twitter's revenue.
On Monday, Musk himself acknowledged the business problems during a Twitter Spaces session with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. During the talk, Musk accused non-profit groups of pressuring advertisers to halt business with Twitter since it shifted priorities to promoting "free speech" over reining in content moderation.
This has included inviting banned users—including white nationalists—back to the platform, which has caused ads to appear next to their tweets.
“Basically, our revenue was cut in half because we didn’t tow the line,” Musk said. “And it’s frankly a struggle for Twitter to break even, and we’re hoping to break even, but we’re not there yet. But I don’t care how much it costs or what it takes. If we lose free speech we lose democracy.”
Musk thanked companies such as Apple and Disney for continuing to advertise on the social media platform. However, he noted other advertisers have boycotted Twitter.
“For North America and Europe, we’ve seen roughly half of our advertising disappear overnight simply because we insist on free speech,” Musk claimed.
Although Musk is stepping down as CEO, he’ll remain as Twitter’s owner and chief technology officer. So he'll continue to have a huge influence on the platform, which he acquired in late October. At this point, Twitter has lost about 80% of its staff through layoffs and resignations.