Foreign media: Under Musk's power, how much influence can X platform CEO Linda Yakarino still have?

On November 7th, it was announced that since June this year, Linda Yaccarino has taken over as the CEO of social media company X. Although Jakarino holds the highest position in the company, Elon Musk's immense influence may hinder her from showcasing her skills

On November 7th, it was announced that since June this year, Linda Yaccarino has taken over as the CEO of social media company X. Although Jakarino holds the highest position in the company, Elon Musk's immense influence may hinder her from showcasing her skills.

At present, the owner, chief technology officer, and super user Musk of Company X are still the core figures of the company. At the X company plenary meeting held last week, Musk spoke 3735 English words, while Jakarino only spoke 1833 words. Musk spoke almost twice as much as Jakarino. The entire meeting was more like Yakarino interviewing Musk to discuss his vision for a universal application, rather than the CEO discussing his vision.

So, X's dating feature XDating is coming soon? "Jakarino once asked Musk.

Yes. To some extent, something is already there, "Musk replied. But I think we may be able to improve the current situation of dating apps. Part of it is how do you find interesting people? Discovering is always difficult

During the plenary meeting of X Company, neither Musk nor Jakarino actually appeared in X Company's office in San Francisco, USA. At the end of September this year, Jakarino gave an interview at the annual Code Conference and has hardly appeared in the public eye since then. In October of this year, she cancelled her original plan to attend the Wall Street Journal's LiveTech conference.

In Yakarino's X platform account, she recently started forwarding posts posted by Musk herself or on X company accounts. At the same time, Musk eloquently announced repeated reforms to the X platform.

No matter how you view Jakarino's tenure and achievements, it largely depends on how much leadership and decision-making power Musk can give her, "said Jasmine Enberg, chief analyst of social media research at Insider Intelligence, a market research firm. From the beginning, Musk did not withdraw, he seems to be still in charge

The reason why Yakarino was invited to join the X platform is because she has experience managing global advertising business at NBC Universal. However, Enberg said she interpreted Jakarino's appointment as X Company, which was renamed from Twitter, needs to find a way to rebuild its relationship with advertisers. When Musk acquired Twitter, advertisers accounted for 90% of the company's revenue. The current value of Company X is only $19 billion, less than half of Musk's $44 billion acquisition of Twitter a year ago.

When Jakarino was appointed as the company's CEO, Musk had already laid off nearly half of his employees, including the team responsible for cleaning up bad content. You should know that it is precisely this brand safety work that ensures the platform's attractiveness to advertisers. Even worse, Musk allowed previously banned users to log back into social media platforms. In addition, the subscription service Twitter Blue V certification has played little role in compensating for the loss of advertising revenue. According to reports, as of March this year, platform revenue has decreased by 40%. Enberg said that this number is even more unsightly now. She said, "We now expect the advertising revenue of the platform to decrease by 54% this year, which has never happened on any social media platform

Musk's recent decision may make Jakarino's situation even more difficult. In July of this year, less than two months after Musk stepped down as the company's CEO, Twitter changed its name to X. This has temporarily banned the X platform in Indonesia, as the relevant domain names were previously related to "negative content".

Christy Glass, a sociologist at Utah State University who studies the glass cliff phenomenon, said that this brand reshaping approach has actually destroyed the brand awareness Twitter has established globally. The glass cliff phenomenon refers to the fact that when a company is in trouble, women are more likely to be promoted to executive leadership.

Glass said, "He dug someone up to restore advertising revenue, but within a month, he completely destroyed this very successful brand and the recognition it brought. It feels like he swept out all the work that the new CEO needs to do

Glass said that in order to seize the maximum opportunity, CEOs who take office during company crises need to be able to make rapid changes. She explained, "Due to Musk's enormous influence, I haven't seen any evidence yet that Jakarino has the freedom to do what the company needs to do

Another question is how much influence Jakarino has on Musk. When Jakarino was appointed as CEO, Musk said he would continue to serve as the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Chairman of the company's board of directors. Jo Ellen Pozner, associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University, said that this made the situation faced by Jakarino even more complex. She said, "It's almost impossible to have any voice or control when your direct reports are also your boss." "This is not the way hierarchical systems work

Pozner believes that Musk's unwillingness to relinquish his core position is not surprising, as this was the main reason he initially purchased social media platforms. He doesn't like people keeping him quiet, "Pozner said. So, if that's his motivation to enter and take over this company, how could he give control to someone else