X CEO Linda Yaccarino explains reason for getting rid of Twitter name

X CEO Linda Yaccarino told CNBC connected Thursday that the company's determination to get escaped of its Twitter branding reflects proprietor Elon Musk's imaginativeness for the app.

"Elon has been talking astir X, the everything app, for a precise agelong time," Yaccarino said successful an interrogation with CNBC's Sara Eisen. "Even erstwhile we announced that I was joining the company, I was joining the institution to spouse with Elon to alteration Twitter into X, the everything app."

Yaccarino, who started the occupation successful June, said Musk has been moving up to this since buying Twitter precocious past year.

"Think astir what's happened since the acquisition," she said. "Experiences and improvement into long-form video and articles, subscribe to your favourite creators, who are present earning a existent surviving connected the platform. You look astatine video, and soon you'll beryllium capable to marque video chat calls without having to springiness your telephone fig to anyone connected the platform."

Yaccarino besides highlighted the company's plans to alteration payments betwixt users and friends and creators.

"The rebrand represented truly a liberation from Twitter," she said. "A liberation that allowed america to germinate past a bequest mindset and thinking. And to reimagine however everyone, however everyone connected Spaces who's listening, everybody who's watching astir the world. It's going to alteration however we congregate, however we entertain, however we transact each successful 1 platform."

Eisen pushed Yaccarino connected the powerfulness of the Twitter marque and compared it to Johnson & Johnson changing the sanction of Band-Aid.

"If you enactment Twitter, oregon you enactment immoderate your erstwhile marque is, alteration tends to beryllium lone incremental. And you get graded by a bequest study card," Yaccarino said. "And astatine X we deliberation astir what's possible. Not the incremental alteration of what can't beryllium done."

She added that the caller merchandise changes and infrastructure improvements "answers the question of 'why rebrand?'"

Yaccarino said she has "autonomy" nether Musk, adding that advertisers should beryllium comfy returning to the platform.

"Mine and Elon's roles are precise clear," she said.

Yaccarino pointed to the post, announcing her hiring, wherever Musk underscored his continued control implicit merchandise plan and caller technology.

"Elon is moving connected accelerating the rebrand and moving connected the future," Yaccarino said. "And I'm liable for the rest. Running the company, from partnerships to ineligible to income to finance."

Questions had swirled astir Yaccarino's quality to run nether Musk, fixed his extended power implicit the institution and his different ventures, including Tesla and SpaceX.

Yaccarino, the erstwhile planetary advertizing main astatine CNBC genitor institution NBCUniversal, besides emphasized X's effort to amended the advertiser experience, aft brands fled from the level pursuing Musk's acquisition of Twitter.

Hate speech and potentially illegal contented proliferated successful the days and weeks aft Musk took power of the platform, CNBC and NBC News antecedently reported. Brands were unwilling to hazard having their promotions look adjacent to concerning content, starring to a wide exodus of advertiser dollars.

Yaccarino said X's spot and information squad is "healthier" than it was erstwhile it was publically traded. "You mightiness not agree" with each posts, Yaccarino added.

Twitter efficaciously disbanded its ethical artificial quality squad successful November and laid disconnected each but 1 of its members, on with 15% of its spot and information department. The determination stopped the ethical AI team's enactment connected "algorithmic amplification monitoring," oregon tracking elections and governmental parties to spot if "content was being amplified successful a mode that it shouldn't," Rumman Chowdhury, the team's erstwhile lead, told CNBC successful May.

Yaccarino faces an uphill conflict successful rebuilding advertiser trust. Musk has claimed that idiosyncratic engagement continually reaches caller highs, but the institution has yet to supply factual information to backmost up those assertions. Coca-Cola, Visa and different brands returned to advertizing nether her leadership, Yaccarino said, arsenic a effect of her nonstop engagement with selling and communications executives.

Brands are present "protected from the hazard of being adjacent to" perchance toxic content, Yaccarino said. She added that if contented is "lawful but awful" it's hard to region it from the platform, but that the company's caller contented controls would trim advertiser risk.

Yaccarino told Eisen that headcount had stabilized astatine 1,500 employees, down from 8,000 earlier the acquisition. The layoffs, which occurred earlier her tenure, were a "very indispensable outgo subject exercise," she added.

Yaccarino was comparatively dismissive of the menace posed by Meta's Threads, which has seen engagement autumn disconnected since a buzzy launch. But, she added, "you tin ne'er ever instrumentality your oculus disconnected immoderate competition." Meta already captures significant advertiser spending done Instagram and Facebook. Threads has yet to present advertising.

She besides demurred connected a imaginable cage lucifer betwixt Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. If it does happen, Yaccarino said, "Elon is training," adding that a imaginable combat would beryllium a "great marque sponsorship opportunity."

— CNBC's Hayden Field contributed to this report.