‘Game On!': Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino Is Ready for Instagram’s Reported Competitor
Newly-hired Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino might have a new text-based social media competitor to deal with soon, but the Elon Musk successor says she’s up for the challenge.
In response to a story from the tech news site TechCrunch that reported a “Twitter Clone” would be coming from Instagram and its parent company Meta this summer, Yaccarino tweeted simply, “Game on!”
Meta didn’t immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Game on! https://t.co/62JYrLuuCJ
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) May 21, 2023
The rumored app will be stand-alone, but partially integrated with Instagram, TechCrunch reported, based on an email shared with a select group of creators that the site viewed. The report also said the new platform’s users will keep their Instagram verification and handle, and all of their followers will receive a notification to follow them on the still-unnamed app.
The “Twitter Clone” could launch as soon as this summer, according to the report.
Many Twitter users have been waiting for a microblogging alternative for quite some time. Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company last year, complaints have been heard about the site from across the political spectrum for a variety of reasons, whether it be a rise in hate speech on the platform, the implementation of Twitter Blue, or, most recently, Musk’s hiring of Yaccarino as his successor as CEO. Right-wing users disapproved of Yaccarino due to her liberal viewpoints and her association with the World Economic Forum, a global lobbying organization for multinational companies.
In her first tweets since her hiring, Yaccarino said she is aiming to build “Twitter 2.0” when she officially starts her work as CEO in a few weeks. Musk said in his announcement of Yaccarino’s appointment she would also be heading up his yet-to-be-explained “X” platform, a concept he described as “the everything app” back in October.
Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!
My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023
Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022
