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Elon Musk’s hire of Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, says a lot about where Musk plans to take the news-dependent, micro-blogging website that has become the center of the media universe.
Notable conservative Twitter accounts raised alarms that Yaccarino is a social justice warrior who pushed DEI and mask and vaccine mandates and wants to return Twitter to a “woke” paradise that sees accounts banned for thought crimes. Meanwhile, progressive media accounts highlighted her Catholic background and Republican connections.
Right-wing accounts declared it the death of Twitter, even as it was revealed that Tucker Carlson will be bringing streaming programming similar to his former show on Fox News to the platform. It was also reported that Musk had offered a similar show and platform to fired CNN host Don Lemon. This is where Yaccarino’s background as a top advertising executive at NBC Universal comes into play, as she played point in helping the network launch its much-heralded Peacock streaming service.
Speculating about where Yaccarino falls on the political spectrum is just what media does these days; it’s online bloodsport. But Musk clearly brought her onboard to move Twitter to a streaming media platform, expand on the live Twitter Spaces feature and help bring in big-time advertisers — as well as calm those who may take umbrage to the negative media coverage journalists will hit them with for sponsoring “the Tucker Carlson online platform.”
Yaccarino hosted Musk at the World Economic Forum earlier this year, a point of contention for Musk’s domestic fanboy accounts on the right. It was, however, a fascinating conversation about the need to balance free speech with content moderation that is appealing enough for large corporate sponsors. Musk bristled at the idea, stating that if sponsors join Twitter only to try to control the content, then it would be a hard no. The aim of bringing on Yaccarino is to lend a bit of corporate legitimacy to the brand, as well as to guide Twitter into competition not with Meta (Facebook and Instagram), but with Amazon Studios and streaming services such as Peacock and Fox Nation.
Landing Carlson is the first big clue as to what Musk’s intentions with Twitter are as he rebrands the company into “X” and develops it into what he calls “the everything app” — where users can consume media via streams, photos and videos as it happens. This is Twitter’s true potential power, but users will also be able to shop from hundreds of big-name brands, and do so while watching Tucker Carlson’s monologue.
The olive branch to Don Lemon appears to show that Musk isn’t necessarily driven by political ideology, but rather the void of balance on network news infotainment. Twitter users can watch Tucker Carlson at 8 p.m. and then Don Lemon at 9 p.m. (hypothetically) and won’t even need to change a channel to do so.
This is where Yaccarino’s expertise comes in — handling advertisers and making sure Twitter’s launch into longform, formatted talk show programming goes smoothly. Should Carlson’s launch be successful, it would be an advertising boon to Twitter and change the future of the platform. Twitter’s net viewership would be compared side-by-side to that of Fox News or CNN. Thus far, other social media platforms haven’t even attempted such a thing. The result will be that any media-driven campaigns to name and shame sponsors, as Media Matters, for instance, does with advertisers and Fox News, will be dwarfed by the sheer size of the audience.
