- By Priyanka Payal
- Sun, 25 Jun 2023 10:44 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino has though not full-fledgedly assumed the responsibility of her role, but she has started making her presence felt. In the latest development, Linda Yaccarino has reportedly settled the strained ties with Google Cloud over non-payments of its bills before the June 30 contract deadline.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) citing a person familiar with the matter, “Twitter Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino intervened to help repair the relationship between the social-media company and Alphabet’s Google, after a payment issue.”
Linda Yaccarino officially entered the building on June 12 and her first memo to employees titled “Building Twitter 2.0 Together,” has created a lot of confusion for some people.
Yaccarino's email to Twitter employees which has created a lot of buzz read:
“Twitter is on a mission to become the world's most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication. We're on the precipice of making history--and that's not an empty promise. That's OUR reality. When you start by wrapping your arms around this powerful vision, literally everything is possible. You have to genuinely believe--and work hard for that belief. And in this moment of complete reinvention, we have the opportunity to reach across aisles, create new partnerships, celebrate new voices, and build something together that can change the world. And from what I can tell so far, you're built for this.
The success of Twitter 2.0 is all of our responsibility.
We need to think big
We need to transform
We need to do it all together.”
One sentence in the mail which is seen as a red flag for anyone willing to work with the company is "The success of Twitter 2.0 is all of our responsibility." These lines may appear motivating for some, but nowhere in this mail, the new Twitter boss mentioned what’s her definition of success. This is because how an individual defines success varies from person to person. Here the definition of success can be different for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and that’s what matters the most. Besides, for a company which has sacked 80% of its employees saying that “…is all our responsibility” seems to put an additional burden on employees working in the company. Last, but not least, it is still not clear what Twitter 2.0 means, i..e whether it is a complete reinvention of the existing platform or it is a drastic shift in the business strategy of the micro-blogging site where it charges its users for a blue checkmark.
Twitter Resumes Paying Google Cloud Bills Under New CEO
One must note that Elon Musk's Twitter has often remained in the spotlight for either delaying bill payments or refusing to pay them altogether. A Reuters report originally attributed to Platformer, said that Twitter denied to pay its Google Cloud bills as the company's contract renewal date with Google approaches this month. Now, it is not that difficult for anyone to understand how non-payment could be a problem for a company and impact its goodwill in the market, but what is worse for the social media company is the repercussions if it gets evicted from its cloud computing platform. One of the biggest challenges for Twitter was the exodus of advertisers. Around 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising, but the company has struggled to bring in ad revenues compared to its business rivals. Long before Musk acquired the platform, Twitter struggled to emulate the levels of profitability achieved by other competitors like Meta and TikTok.
Having spent nearly 12 years as an advertising executive at NBCUniversal, the new Twitter boss was quick to understand how important it is to improve the company’s reputation with advertisers and bring it to profitability. Yaccarino reportedly held a video call with Google Cloud's CEO, Thomas Kurian, to patch things over, even coming away with the possibility of Google spending more on advertising on the platform.