What’s in store for Twitter’s new CEO

This week’s edition focuses on Twitter and what’s in store for ex-NBCU ad chief Linda Yaccarino when she officially enters the building as CEO. Beyond Twitter’s own issues, she’ll soon have to contend with competition from Meta, which is gearing up to unveil its Twitter competitor soon.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has released its official ChatGPT iOS app. Hopefully that puts an end to all the ChatGPT scams in the App Store.

A scheduling note: I’ll be taking next week off for Memorial Day. It’s the first time Command Line has gone dark since this newsletter began in January. Thanks for your understanding and support.

In mid February, Elon Musk was asked when he’d name a new CEO for Twitter.

“I’m guessing probably toward the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company,” he told a room full of government leaders and investors gathered in Dubai.

It turns out that Linda Yaccarino had other ideas. Last week’s announcement that she got the job was the culmination of a multi-week charm offensive to convince Musk to give her the role, according to people who have talked to her about the saga. After a rendezvous at the ad giant WPP’s exclusive Stream conference in Napa last week, I’m told the two sealed the deal merely hours before Musk cryptically tweeted that he’d found a CEO, which Yaccarino has since told friends she wasn’t expecting him to do.

Musk’s tweet led to reporters quickly deducing that it was Yaccarino. The news broke while she was in rehearsals for NBCUniversal’s big Upfront presentation for advertisers slated to happen the following Monday, which she ended up not participating in.

Though she hasn’t officially cut all ties with NBCU yet (employment contracts, you gotta love ‘em), Yaccarino is publicly embracing her new role with predictable eagerness. Her LinkedIn has already been updated, and she has the special blue check that says she works for Twitter. People who know her tell me she is enamored with Musk and willing to look past his many antics. That said, this week’s news is illustrative of the fast-moving, messy situation she’s about to step into.

First, there’s Musk’s curious acquisition of Laskie, an early-stage job recruiting platform focused on tech roles. It’s an example of how he wants to expand Twitter’s functionality to become a super app for facilitating everything from payments to eventually hailing an autonomous Tesla. Musk has tweeted multiple times, including today, that he thinks Twitter is a natural place for recruiting to happen, which I don’t necessarily disagree with.

Even still, it’s unclear how Twitter’s expansion into new use cases, such as recruiting, will help its struggling ads business, or if advertising is even a business Musk wants the company in long term. A now-deleted webpage explaining Laskie’s business said the company took a percentage of a hire’s salary for the first year if it was made through its proprietary “matchmaking platform.”

Musk has been clear since the beginning that he wants Twitter to diversify its business away from advertising, so it’s a bit curious for him to hire one of the industry’s most high-profile executives as CEO. On the surface, Yaccarino’s experience seems to be in direct odds with the direction Musk is taking Twitter as a product.

If I were Yaccarino, I’d read the lawsuit filed this week against Musk by a group of senior ex-Twitter employees in Delaware court. The complaint lays bare Musk’s penchant for skirting the law, with a special focus on his mandate that Twitter avoid paying its bills, including rent, whenever possible.

Like the other ex-employee lawsuits that have already been filed, the main goal is to hold Musk responsible for not paying the full severance packages he agreed to honor in his merger paperwork. (Frustratingly, Musk has not been asked about this topic in any of the recent interviews he has done.) Here are a few standout excerpts from the complaint that illustrate how he allegedly operates behind the scenes:

Does Yaccarino endorse this kind of behavior? If not, will she stand up to Musk, who says he plans to keep running product and engineering? We’re about to find out.

While Yaccarino gets her bearings over at Twitter, Meta has sensed an opening to strike.

The company is gearing up to release its own standalone Twitter competitor sometime this summer, I’ve learned, and has recently begun contacting talent agencies and celebrities to gauge their interest in trying an early version of a new “text-based” app that integrates with Instagram. Details are still scarce, and it doesn’t sound like Meta has granted access to outsiders yet, though that will likely change very soon.

As the social media consultant Matt Navarra recently tweeted (and I can now corroborate), Meta is focused on getting famous people from Hollywood and the sports world onboarded early, which is smart. The sell is made easier by the fact that the forthcoming app uses Instagram’s account system. An account’s followers on Instagram will be notified when they join the new app, and their handle and blue check will automatically roll over.

While judgment will be reserved until the app is officially released, this is really Meta’s battle to lose. Musk’s handling of Twitter has opened a rare window for another app to capture the attention of the chattering class. Bluesky, meanwhile, remains invite-only with no Android app, and Mastodon’s growth has slowed considerably. As my friend Casey Newton has reported, the coming text-based app from Meta is also going to be decentralized, which presumably means it will be interoperable with Mastodon and the rest of the ActivityPub protocol. I’m fascinated by that decision and its implications for the broader social media landscape.

“We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests,” a Meta spokesperson told Newton in March. A couple of months later, that opportunity certainly feels more obvious than ever.

OpenAI had another big week, with CEO Sam Altman practicing regulatory capture, err testifying, before Congress. And today OpenAI released a native iPhone app for ChatGPT in the App Store.

The combination of these two events happening in the same week is illustrative of how the leading players in AI are operating. Even as they are warning lawmakers about the risks of the technology they’re inventing, they’re moving as fast as they can to get it into the hands of more people. ChatGPT is probably going to be Apple’s most downloaded app of the year.

Until now, Snapchat has been the most mobile-friendly way to experience ChatGPT through its MyAI bot, but now anyone with an iPhone can have OpenAI’s native experience, including full access to GPT-4, on their home screen. I tried it today and am impressed with how smooth and fast the app is to use. The lock screen widget also lets you tap to open immediately into the chat box, which will probably become a daily habit for me. Hopefully OpenAI can add Siri integration soon.

I find it interesting that OpenAI is charging the same monthly fee for its premium tier on iOS as it does on the web. Twitter, by contrast, charges more in-app for its subscription to offset Apple’s 30 percent fee. For now, OpenAI seems willing to give Apple a sizable cut of its subscription revenue.

“I’ll say what I have to say, and if the consequence is losing money, so be it.” - Elon Musk in an interview with CNBC’s David Faber.

​​That’s it for this week. If you aren’t already subscribed to Command Line, you can do so here.

I’ll be back on June 1st with a packed edition. In the meantime, if you have any feedback on this edition, let me know. Thanks for subscribing.