X CEO Linda Yaccarino has made sense of why the organization chose to dispose of its Twitter branding.
Yaccarino said she has “autonomy” under proprietor Elon Musk, and that she’s engaged with “everything” that goes into “running the organization.”
She said brands have been getting back to the platform and that new content control tools should help reassure them.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that the organization’s decision to dispose of its Twitter branding reflects owner Elon Musk’s vision for the App.
“Elon has been talking about X, the everything app, for a very long time,” Yaccarino said in an interview with CNBC. Even when we announced that I was joining the company, I was joining the company to partner with Elon to transform Twitter into X, the everything app.”
Yaccarino, who officially began her work in June, said Musk has been stirring up to this since purchasing Twitter before the end of last year.
“Think about what’s happened since the acquisition,” she said. “Experiences and evolution into long-form video and articles, subscribe to your favorite creators, who are now earning a real living on the platform. You look at video, and soon you’ll be able to make video chat calls without having to give your phone number to anyone on the platform.”
Yaccarino also featured the organization’s arrangements to empower payments among users and friends and creators.
“The rebrand represented really a liberation from Twitter,” she said. “A liberation that allowed us to evolve past a legacy mindset and thinking. And to reimagine how everyone, how everyone on Spaces who’s listening, everybody who’s watching around the world. It’s going to change how we congregate, how we entertain, how we transact all in one platform.”
Speaking on the power of the Twitter brand, she said:
“If you stay Twitter, or you stay whatever your previous brand is, change tends to be only incremental. And you get graded by a legacy report card,” Yaccarino said. “And at X we think about what’s possible. Not the incremental change of what can’t be done.”
She added that the new product changes and infrastructure upgrades “responds to the subject of ‘why rebrand?'”
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Yaccarino said she has “autonomy” under Musk, adding that sponsors ought to be open to getting back to the platform.
Yaccarino pointed to the post, announcing her hiring, where Musk underscored his continued control over product design and new technology.
“Elon is working on accelerating the rebrand and working on the future,” Yaccarino said. “And I’m responsible for the rest. Running the company, from partnerships to legal to sales to finance.”
Questions had twirled about Yaccarino’s capacity to work under Musk, given his broad command over the organization and his other efforts, including Tesla and also, SpaceX.
Yaccarino said X’s trust and safety team is “healthier” than it was when it was publicly traded. “You might not agree” with all posts, Yaccarino added.
Twitter effectively disbanded its ethical artificial intelligence team in November and laid off all but one of its members, along with 15% of its trust and safety department.
Brands are now “protected from the risk of being next to” potentially toxic content, Yaccarino said. She added that if content is “lawful but awful” it’s difficult to remove it from the platform, but that the company’s new content controls would reduce advertiser risk.
According to Yaccarino, the head count had stabilized at 1,500 employees, down from 8,000 before the acquisition. The layoffs, which occurred before her tenure, were a very necessary cost discipline exercise.
Yaccarino was relatively dismissive of the threat posed by Meta’s Threads, which has seen engagement fall off since a buzzy launch. But, she added, “you can never ever take your eye off any competition.” Meta already captures significant advertiser spending through Instagram and Facebook. Threads has yet to introduce advertising.
