In a live chat earlier this month, Elon Musk said that X would charge users “a small monthly payment” to use its service, a necessity, he explained, to combat the “vast armies of robots” on the platform. But in an interview this week at the Code conferenceLinda Yaccarino, CEO of X, seemed surprised by a question about this plan, first asking the interviewer to repeat the question and then asking if Musk had actually said whether Am I just thinking about that?
CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, who was conducting the interview, wanted to know how such a change would affect X’s business, which today relies heavily on advertising revenue. Yaccarino, who joined X from NBCU, where she had been president of its advertising and partnerships group, surely would have known if users to generate income. (Or at least keep the robots at bay!)
When asked how many X users could lose with such a change, Yaccarino seemed nervous. He asked Boorstin to clarify whether Musk had said that X was moving toward this model or rather whether he had simply floated the idea.
(For the record, Musk had announced in a live broadcast conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 18 that the company was “moving to a small monthly payment” for the use of Platform He went on to explain how a small fee paid by all users would make it prohibitive for spammers to profit from their bots.)
When Yaccarino did not directly answer the question, Boorstin pressed and asked if X’s CEO had been consulted about the decision.
“We talked about everything,” Yaccarino responded vaguely, again avoiding a response.
The interviewer noted that Yaccarino’s background was in advertising, a point he likely made because it would be surprising if Musk had made his decision about charging fees without input from the former advertising executive.
But Yaccarino interrupted her.
“Why would not?” she responded, somewhat combatively. “Do you think Elon brought me to the company to be head of advertising… or do you think he brought me to run the company and give our users the best experience possible?”
He then went on to lay out the future of X, a platform that planned to broaden its horizons in several ways: allowing users to watch videos, for example, and soon make transactions. He also highlighted his past experience pushing traditional media companies to innovate.
“That is quite an experience in which there is no surrogate mother. There is no substitute for X,” Yaccarino said.
But since the issue of user subscriptions had not yet been addressed, Boorstin tried once again, asking if Yaccarino thought a subscription-based gratuitous. He also questioned whether Yaccarino was really playing more of a COO role, given that X’s product teams still report to Musk. Or maybe a CEO in name only.
“Yeah, it’s not nice,” Yaccarino responded, referring to the final comment about his lack of power, before continuing to explain. “(Musk) executes the product. He runs the technology. He leads a team of exceptionally talented engineers… Who wouldn’t want Elon Musk sitting next to him running the product?
Some spectators raised their hands and laughter was heard.
Unfortunately, however, the X CEO never directly responded to any of the questions about the proposed subscription model at X that Musk had discussed.
If anything, his responses indicated that he was not aware of such a plan or that he did not believe it was anything more than being in the idea phase at the moment. It wasn’t clear that she even understood what the intent was, as she couldn’t address the issue of bots or how fees would work to keep them off the service.
Of course, as a former advertising executive, she may not have wanted to scare X’s advertisers into thinking that X’s days as a free, ad-supported service were somehow limited.
Overall, the interview was confusing, with Yaccarino seemingly flustered by basic questions about electoral integrity. In fact, she denied that X was disbanding X’s election integrity team Hours after Musk posted on X that they were “gone.”
She also seemed to have no precise control over the number of X’s users, at one point saying that X had “200 to 250 (million)” daily active users… “something like that.”
He also said that X had 540 million monthly active users worldwide, even though Musk had said just a few days ago that number was 550 million.
The biggest takeaway from the discussion was that Yaccarino and Musk were not, perhaps, on the same page when it came to executing X and that on some of X’s biggest moves, the CEO was out of the loop.
