Introduction:
The interviewer, Julia Boorstin of CNBC, was interested in learning how such a change might affect X’s business, Elon Musk which is currently heavily dependent on ad revenue. Yaccarino would have known if X tried to change from its primarily ad-supported model to one that also relied on user subscriptions for revenue since she came to X from NBCU, where she had served as chairman of its advertising and partnerships business.
Yaccarino appeared frazzled when asked how many users X may lose with such a shift. She questioned Boorstin to clarify if Musk had stated that X would be switching to this model or if he had merely floated the notion.
(For the record, Musk had stated that the business was “moving to a small monthly payment” for using the X platform in a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 18. He continued to describe how a little cost paid by all users would make it prohibitive for spammers to earn from their bots, so it was clear he was not just thinking it as an aside at the moment.)
Yaccarino dodged the topic, so Boorstin persisted by enquiring whether the CEO of X had been involved in the decision-making process.
Yaccarino’s experience is in advertising, which the journalist brought up since it would be odd if Musk had decided to charge fees without consulting the former advertising executive.
She continued by discussing X’s future as a platform that wanted to expand in several ways, such as enabling users to view films and conduct business. She also highlighted her prior achievements in encouraging established media companies to innovate.
Elon Musk’s Plan to Charge for X:
Elon Musk’s Plan to Charge for X [Source of Image: Techcrunch.com]
There is no surrogate in that entire experience. There is no substitute for X, according to Yaccarino.
Boorstin attempted again, this time asking Yaccarino if she believed a subscription-based X was a good idea, if she was consulted, and whether or not she thought X should still have some free tier. However, the issue of user subscriptions still needs to be addressed. Given that product teams at X still answer to Musk, she also questioned if Yaccarino genuinely held a position more akin to a COO. Or only a CEO in the name.
Unfortunately, the CEO of X never responded directly to any of Musk’s queries regarding the suggested subscription plan at X.
Her comments suggested that she was either uninformed of such a strategy or didn’t consider it much more than a notion. She could not discuss the bots issue or the costs that would be used to keep them off the service, so it wasn’t apparent that she even knew what the aim was.
She didn’t want to give X advertisers the impression that the company’s days as a free, ad-supported service were numbered because she was a former advertising executive.
Overall, it was a chaotic interview, with Yaccarino needing clarification in response to simple inquiries about X’s operations and questions about Musk’s activities, like his intended lawsuit against the ADL, subscriptions, or personnel for election integrity. She even refuted Musk’s claim that X was disbanding its election integrity team hours after Musk tweeted on X that they were “gone.”
She also appeared to be unsure of the exact number of users for X, starting at one point that there were “200 to 250 [million]” people who were active every day or “something like that.”
She also claimed that X has 540 million monthly active users worldwide, despite Musk having only recently stated that the number was 550 million.
The main takeaway from the conversation was that Yaccarino and Musk were not necessarily on the same page when running X and that the CEO needed to be informed of some of X’s most significant decisions.
