Linda Yaccarino has just shared the first memo that she emailed Twitter’s staff as CEO, one week after stepping into the top role—on Twitter of course.
In it, she laid out why she joined the social media giant and her vision for Twitter 2.0—echoing owner Elon Musk’s goal for the company to be a “global town square” with a focus on freedom of speech.
“Twitter is on a mission to become the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication. That’s not an empty promise,” she shared on Monday. “That’s OUR reality.”
Why Twitter?
Since Yaccarino was announced as CEO, much has been said about why she’d want to work in Musk’s shadow (with him remaining as chair and CTO), including whether she’s been enlisted merely to fix the state of Twitter’s advertising and if she’ll just be a CEO in name only.
So the ad executive-turned-CEO wasted no time addressing why she took the top job in the memo.
Have you ever been talking with someone particularly insightful and thought, you should have the freedom to speak your mind. We all should.
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) June 12, 2023
Enter Twitter 2.0.
“People keep asking me: Why Twitter?”, Yaccarino began. “So, I’ll tell you.”
She continued by explaining how Musk’s work in other fields inspired her to work for him: “Elon knew space exploration and electric vehicles needed transformation, so he did it,” she wrote, before adding a description of Twitter that sounded much like Musk’s.
“More recently it has become increasingly clear that the global town square needs transformation—to drive civilization forward through the unfiltered exchange of information and open dialogue about the things that matter most to us.”
Sharing her Twitter vision
Yaccarino, who led global ad sales for NBCUniversal in her previous gig, then proceeded to share her vision for Twitter under her leadership—which dovetailed with Musk’s own statements about freedom of speech.
“Have you ever been talking with someone particularly insightful and thought, you should have the freedom to speak your mind,” she wrote. “We all should… Enter Twitter 2.0.”
The social-media platform now has “the opportunity to reach across aisles, create new partnerships, celebrate new voices, and build something together that can change the world,” she added.
Let’s dig our heels in (4 inches or flat!) And build Twitter 2.0 together.
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) June 12, 2023
Tough task ahead
Musk has frequently promised free speech on Twitter. But his moves to cut content restrictions on the site have not landed well with advertisers, as they have coincided with a rise in hate speech and, at least initially, bogus brand accounts.
Since purchasing the platform, the “free speech absolutist” has re-instated the accounts of previously banned controversial figures like Donald Trump and Andrew Tate, and engaged with right-wing provocateurs on the platform.
Although Musk insisted in April that advertisers that fled over worries about their brands appearing next to harmful or unappealing content have “come back”, leaked internal documents obtained by the New York Times suggest otherwise.
The platform’s revenue from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59% compared to the same time last year—and it’s a slump that likely will be up to Yaccarino to fix.
“It’s rare to have the chance to put a new future into the hands of every person, partner, and creator on the planet. That’s exactly why I’m here—with all of you,” she concluded in the memo.