Linda Yaccarino, the new CEO of Twitter, sent her first memo to staff on Monday (June 12). The subject line: “Building Twitter 2.0 Together.”
“Together” is an interesting choice of word. Since taking over Twitter in October 2022, completing a $44 billion deal he tried but failed to scrap, Elon Musk has run the company at best like a vanity project and at worst like an autocracy.
Yaccarino was quick to adopt Musk’s “Twitter 2.0” parlance, but in her initial staff note failed to explain how the platform will evolve to be anything more than an extension of its billionaire owner’s ego.
For this reason, it always felt unlikely that Musk would actually hire a CEO, despite his insistence he’d do so. Not only has he been heavy-handed about Twitter’s strategic direction, he also has stepped in to review code or make nitpicky decisions about content moderation.
Why Musk made room at Twitter for a CEO who wasn’t him
Musk has largely repositioned Twitter as a right-wing subscription media website, removing content rules against hate speech and misinformation as part of a crusade to bring “free speech” to Twitter, and selling bits and pieces of the once-free user experience as part of the Twitter Blue subscription package.
The subscription strategy, if it had worked, might have freed Musk from the input of large advertisers who want a “brand-safe” experience on Twitter (meaning they don’t want to advertise soap or flight deals next to pro-Nazi tweets). But Musk is deeply entrenched in the debt he took on in order to afford Twitter. He owes $1 billion annually just to service the debt, and that would have meant selling more than 10 million new subscriptions. As of late April, he had signed up only 550,000 people.
Fidelity Investments recently marked down the value of its Twitter investment by 66% since Musk took over, implying that Twitter is now only worth about $15 billion. So Musk needs advertising, which made up 92% of revenue before his takeover.
In that sense, hiring Yaccarino away from her role as the top advertising executive at NBCUniversal, represents an admission of defeat. And her inaugural staff memo represents the dual mission of her job: to appease both advertisers and Musk.
We’ve annotated Yaccarino’s memo to put her words into context. (Yaccarino’s text is in bold; Quartz’s annotations are unbolded.)
Building Twitter 2.0 Together
Hello Twitter!
People keep asking me: Why Twitter? So, I’ll tell you
Typically when someone becomes the CEO of a multibillion-dollar media company, people don’t ask why they took the job. The real question people are likely asking Yaccarino is “Why would you work with Musk?”
From space exploration to electric vehicles, Elon knew these industries needed transformation, so he did it. 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.
There’s an unresolved tension here. If Twitter was already the global town square, then why would it need transformation? If it could become the global town square, why not say that? The rhetoric Musk and Yaccarino use implies there was a golden age of Twitter before it had too many content rules. But now with Musk in charge, those rules have largely been unwound. So, again, what’s in need of transformation?
Have you ever been talking with someone particularly insightful and thought, You’re brilliant—everybody should get the chance to hear this. Or, I’m learning so much from you—can we do this again? Or maybe it’s as simple as, You should have the freedom to speak your mind. We all should.
Enter Twitter 2.0.
No, I have never had a discussion where I thought, “This is a great discussion. Too bad this person would be banned from Twitter for posting it.” In fact, I’d like to know what exactly Yaccarino is discussing with insightful and brilliant people that would have been outlawed under the old regime.
Twitter is on a mission to become the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication. We’re on the precipice of making history—and that’s not an empty promise. That’s OUR reality.
Enter the word “accuracy” into the record. Is Yaccarino focused on accuracy—an important goal for any media company—or on unfettered speech? They can be at odds, and it’s likely Twitter has to use its editorial discretion to draw lines—like the old guard did—between what speech is acceptable and what isn’t. This is Twitter’s First Amendment right, by the way. Users aren’t protected from Twitter by the First Amendment, but the First Amendment protects both Twitter and its users from speech encroachments by the US government.
When you start by wrapping your arms around this powerful vision, literally everything is possible. You have to genuinely believe—and work hard for that belief. And in this moment of complete reinvention, we have the opportunity to reach across aisles, create new partnerships, celebrate new voices, and build something together that can change the world. And from what I can tell so far, you’re built for this.
For all of his talk about equally angering both sides of the political aisle, Musk has had a notable rightward slide in recent months and spends much of his day making fun of liberals, posting racist and transphobic memes, and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. He’s invited white supremacists and neo-Nazis back onto the platform, hosted a campaign launch event with Republican US presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, and embraced anti-vaccine conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is running for president as a Democrat.
So, what voices does Yaccarino want to bring into the fold? What aisle does she want to reach across? And what new partners (that’s industry-speak for advertisers) does she think will want to support Twitter in this effort?
The success of Twitter 2.0 is all of our responsibility.
We need to think big.
We need to transform.
We need to do it all together.
And we can do it all by starting from first principles—questioning our assumptions and building something new from the ground up. It’s rare to have the chance to put a new future into the hands of every person, partner, and creator on the planet.
This team-building hype strategy would be smart if it weren’t so ironic. Twitter has been run solely on Musk’s whims and he’s ousted numerous executives who have defied him. Yaccarino surely knows this and wants to appease Musk: Even the reference to “first principles” is a nod to her new boss, who has evangelized the term as a management style.
That’s exactly why I’m here—with all of YOU.
So, let’s dig our heels in (4 inches or flat!) and build Twitter 2.0 together.
Linda
Yaccarino wrote this memo for an audience of many: for staff, for employees, for advertisers, and for Musk. The tone and tenor of her next memo will likely be decided by how well she and Musk are meshing—or by how much revenue she’s bringing in for Twitter.