New chief executives may have taken charge of a job as challenging as Linda Yaccarino’s. The 59-year-old media veteran, who assumed the office of CEO of Twitter in early June, is likely to face many hurdles. The microblogging site has seen an exodus of talented workforce in recent months, while advertisers are abandoning it rapidly.

Many more troubles keep cropping up every passing day, and Ms Yaccarino will certainly need a strong will and an equally thick skin to clean up the mess at Twitter. Ms Yaccarino’s track record of past successes perhaps prompted Elon Musk, the new owner and executive chairman of Twitter, to bet on her in the first place.

Born in Long Island, New York, to parents of Italian origin, young Linda graduated from Pennsylvania State University’s Donald P Bellisario College of Communications with a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications. She worked with Turner Entertainment for close to 20 years and went on to become its executive vice-president and COO in charge of advertising sales, marketing and acquisitions.

She later joined NBCUniversal as president of its cable entertainment and digital advertising sales in 2011. A year later, she was promoted as chairman, overseeing the television network’s advertising and client partnerships. In her 12-year stint at NBCUniversal, Ms Yaccarino transformed the television company’s advertising system by uniting the TV network’s various units to create a united monetisation strategy. She also played a key role in launching Peacock, NBC’s advertisement-supported streaming service.

Ms Yaccarino is a well-respected figure in the media world. She is renowned for her strong connections with sponsors and her capacity to increase revenue. Advertisers are what Twitter needs very badly, and her appointment as the CEO could be the perfect remedy for ailing social media platform.

However, exodus of advertisers from Twitter and its huge slump in advertising revenue are actually symptoms of a deeper malaise. The biggest challenge for Ms Yaccarino is handling Mr Musk, whose mercurial and unpredictable actions have done more harm to the company. Twitter finds itself in a rather chaotic mess ever since Mr Musk acquired it around seven months ago.

On his very first day at Twitter, Mr Musk fired the company’s top executives, including its Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal and other top brass. Subsequently, the company’s workforce has been slashed by about 80 per cent during this period. The result is that there are far fewer engineers and content moderators to help rid the platform of hate speech, animal cruelty, graphic violence and pornography. Few advertisers are willing to support Twitter in this toxic state.

To be fair, Twitter’s anaemic balance sheet predated Mr Musk’s acquisition of the company. In fact, the social media platform had last reported profit way back in 2019. It was struggling to compete with the likes of Meta, TikTok and Instagram – the latest to join the rival club is Instagram’s Threads. The situation has only worsened with Mr Musk at the helm.

Ms Yaccarino certainly knows that the corner office at Twitter is no less than a minefield. But her decision to throw away her comparatively- cushy job at NBCUniversal for the challenge of Twitter is quite courageous. So, will her Twitter bet pay off?