Commentary

Linda Yaccarino's 'Why Twitter' Manifesto Thread

by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, June 12, 2023

New Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino began her second week on the job posting a long, thoughtful thread (see below) explaining why she's at Twitter and what its "2.0" mission actually is.

The thread, which followed a post by owner and CTO Elon Musk indicating the company is looking to "hire a vp of witchcraft and propaganda," illustrates the dichotomy of style at the top of the social media platform Yaccarino says has a mission to be the "global town square" that drives "civilization forward" via "an unfiltered exchange of information and open dialog."

"That's not an empty promise," she assures. "It's OUR reality."

Which makes me wonder, does she actually follow @elonmusk's tweets?

2 comments about "Linda Yaccarino's 'Why Twitter' Manifesto Thread".

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Chris Peterson from Market Ideology, June 13, 2023 at 10:26 a.m.
Sounds like Yaccarino is trying to do with Twitter what Chris Licht was trying with CNN - to bring both liberals and conservatives together. Didn't work out for Mr. Licht - I wish Ms. Yaccarino well as we do need more interaction between the two sides vs. more echo chambers. Echo chambers breed divisiveness.

What this means for Twitter is enabling more conservative voices on the platfrom because Twitter has skewed liberal for years (as demonstrated by the overwhelming use of iPhones on Twitter, which skews urban/lliberal). We'll see if they can keep the rhetoric civil. It takes understanding customers as liberal or conservative to make it work. There's a great newsletter called Red and Blue Customers that talks about all of this (ok, full disclosure, I write it).
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Dan Ciccone from STACKED Entertainment, June 13, 2023 at 1:05 p.m.

I don't see what the disconnect is here. Musk has tweeted humorous statements long before he ever considered buying the platform.

MP continues to just gloss over the fact that Musk released all the internal documents proving the government and Twitter were working hand in hand to supress opposing views from being broadcast and was actually shadow banning people who were speaking the truth and not promoting lies.

Musk has been clear for months that Twitter was relying too heavily on advertising and he's looking to find new revenue models and new ways for users to interact and engage each other. He had a bird's nest to unfurl when he bought the company and had to get the government's hand out of the equation. I imagine he's playing a long game and never pretended like he was going to flip everything upside down in 3 months.