In her final public look as CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino sat down final month on the Cannes Lions promoting convention with tennis nice Serena Williams.
Together with touting Williams’ forthcoming X podcast, the pair discovered widespread floor of their experiences with the social media platform lengthy referred to as Twitter. The alternate took on new resonance this week in mild of Yaccarino’s departure from the corporate.
Williams recalled being motivated to win an Australian Open, certainly one of her 23 main singles titles, by a random tweet telling her she was “washed up” and shortly to fade from the game. “After I learn that, I knew immediately that I used to be going to win,” she mentioned. “I want I had simply screenshotted it after which @-ed him with an image of the trophy.”
Yaccarino’s engagement with X has been much more consuming, after all. Working for Musk, the richest particular person on Earth and commander of a military of 222 million followers, has “been positively not boring,” the previous NBCUniversal gross sales chief mentioned of her two-year tenure. Pointing to the group with a decent smile, she added, “I see some of us on the market who’ve leaned in and reached out to me and mentioned, ‘Hold going.’ And also you lean into that positivity.”
The long-expected finish of the road for Yaccarino adopted the acquisition of X by Musk’s AI firm, xAI, final March. That set the wheels in movement for the CEO’s departure, but it surely additionally has raised broader questions on strategic path. Whoever steps into the CEO position (if anybody does) is unlikely to proceed alongside Yaccarino’s path. Whereas her farewell publish on X mentioned she and Musk had turned the platform into an “every part app,” that declare isn’t but really true. Her predominant forte has at all times been promoting, and a capability to leverage a big community constructed over 30 years at NBCU and Turner with a tenacious however polished enterprise method.
Reportedly over mounting objections from a Musk-appointed CFO, former Tubi exec Mahmoud Reza Banki, Yaccarino inked various splashy offers with sports activities leagues in addition to notable expertise. Together with Williams and her sister, Venus, X has solid ties with former Fox Information persona Tucker Carlson and (for a sizzling minute) ex-CNN host Don Lemon. Promoting on X was jolted by the Musk acquisition for about 12 to 18 months in 2022 and 2023, given his firing of 80% of the corporate’s workforce, abandonment of content material moderation within the title of “free speech” and willingness to amplify conspiracy theories and objectionable posts.
Tensions boiled over in November 2023 when Musk instructed advertisers boycotting the platform over model security issues to “go f–ok your self” at a New York Occasions convention. After advert spending declined in Yaccarino’s first 12 months, she helped restore it sufficient by the tip of her run (partially through authorized threats towards advertisers threatening to remain on the sidelines, based on the Wall Avenue Journal) that traders who helped fund Musk’s $44 billion acquisition had been mentioned to have made their a refund, at the very least on paper.
Going ahead, with xAI able to elevating important funds and Musk dedicated to the AI race, hypothesis has been rising about X changing into extra of a seedbed of AI analysis than the video advert automobile Yaccarino envisioned. “Linda’s playbook was good for social media in its conventional type, however even with out the fixed drama with Musk, it’s not clear that the technique has a protracted future,” one former senior-level colleague instructed Deadline.
Henry Innis, founder of selling agency Mutinex, wrote in a Substack publish that Yaccarino’s exit “is “essentially the most seen symptom of a strategic pivot of immense consequence. It means that Musk just isn’t merely making an attempt to repair X’s promoting enterprise, however is as a substitute making ready to jettison the mannequin that has powered social media for almost twenty years.”
Content material moderation and model security have been more and more costly for even large-scale gamers like Meta to fund, and the concurrent rush to spend closely on AI means that there’s prone to be a broader shift. AI instruments are seen as being able to realizing Musk’s imaginative and prescient of “every part apps” which are extra service-based and fewer reliant on promoting, which has historically accounted for greater than 90% of annual income for the foremost social gamers.
“Our firm’s now an AI firm, so I’m not working for a social media firm,” mentioned Tim O’Mahony, director and head of worldwide content material for X throughout a Thursday convention about soccer held in Newark, NJ. Execs at xAI are working to create an “on a regular basis use case” and “practice the AI mannequin to enhance it to get higher experiences for advertisers, for customers, make it extra brand-safe,” O’Mahony added. Musk is “getting closely concerned with it now. So, we’re studying with him.”
The necessity for studying and enchancment with generative AI, after all, turned abundantly clear this week. Yaccarino’s departure got here a day after Grok, the chatbot created by xAI, spewed out a collection of hateful and antisemitic posts, calling itself “MechaHitler.”
Yaccarino, striving to shine extra constructive mild on the platform within the Cannes dialog with Williams, requested why she and her sister selected X as the house of their podcast. The response was revealing. X “is at all times a spot the place you possibly can simply say your ideas and simply be actual,” Williams mentioned, with a realizing chuckle. “Clearly, you get quite a lot of suggestions on these ideas, and quite a lot of them are trustworthy and slightly harsh. … However I like to look issues within the eye. I like to look a problem within the eye and face it.”
Yaccarino nodded alongside and mentioned “we’d like extra of that” when Williams mentioned her podcast would characteristic gossip of a constructive nature. She additionally would possible have endorsed O’Mahony’s line this week. Supposed as a mission assertion, it might have been an outline of the chaotic environment inside X, whose agenda is repeatedly refreshed by the impetuous Musk: “We are saying, ‘as we speak’s timeline is tomorrow’s headline.’”
