X CEO Linda Yaccarino, in a keynote interview at CES 2025 on Tuesday, predicted that Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok will propel the social media platform to grow exponentially over the next year. Cybernews brings you all the highlights from her in-depth CES exchange.
Yaccarino appeared at the Venetian’s Palazzo Ballroom in Las Vegas on Tuesday afternoon to talk about the future of digital communication on the first day of CES 2025, which runs through the week ending on Friday, January 10th.
Walking on stage in a bright pink dress, Yaccarino sat down with Emmy award-winning veteran journalist Catherine Herridge of CBS News in New York, answering about a dozen questions about the Elon Musk-owned platform in her typically animated style.
The Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) President Kinsey Fabrizio, the organization behind the annual technology trade show, introduced the pair, praising Yaccarino as a “trailblazer who embodies the spirit of CES with a career marked by innovation, resilience, and vision.”
Under Yaccarino’s leadership, Fabrizio said X is reshaping the social media landscape for content, creators, and communities, calling the platform “a global newsroom in your pocket.”
Great conversation with @C__Herridge on the @CES stage. Catch up on @Live and @CommunityNotes . . . welcome to the party! pic.twitter.com/mHq3CdULBt
undefined Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) January 7, 2025
Yaccarino pushes X as true town square of the people
Herridge began the 30-minute plus one-on-one conversation by asking Yaccarino what she thought about Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent decision to scrap its fact-checking content moderation program and instead switch to a community-driven notes system to help dispel misinformation on its social media platforms.
The X CEO graciously gave Zuckerberg kudos for making the move to a community notes system – ironically similar to the one used by X – pointing out the need for “keeping each other accountable at a global scale in real-time.”
Community notes were brought to the Twitter platform in 2022 (pre-Musk) and then accelerated by Musk in lieu of fact-checking labels, which were ditched in the run-up to the US presidential election.
“It couldn't be more validating to see that Mark and Meta realized that it's [community notes] the most effective, fastest, fact-checking without bias,” Yaccarino said, adding that users can accurately fact-check in every language.
Singling out Gen Z and their “need for authenticity,” the former NBC exec also said the community notes system “inspires great behavior,” pointing out that “when a post is noted, it is dramatically shared less.”
“I think that people all around the world have spoken. It's why there’s almost a million community notices on X,” she said.
Gen Z, Trend Genius, and Taylor Swift
Speaking of Gen Z, the keynote interview revealed that recent polls show the millennial generation is “what’s really fueling the growth of the platform.”
“It's fashion, it's culture, it's sports, it's music. It's gaming in real-time when they want to see it, which is whenever they want to see it,” Yaccarino said about the most targeted population among advertisers.
According to the CEO, “90% of the advertisers are back on X,” although she did not specify where those stats came from when asked. But it most likely has something to do with its X’s new ad product Trend Genius, introduced by the platform in July.
Essentially, Trend Genius is a tailor-made ad program that tracks internet culture and trends in real-time, allowing brands to “deploy hyper-relevant ads based on those real-time conversation trends.”
To provide an example of the product in action, Yaccarino cited a recent viral moment when American actor Brandley Cooper was seen at a Taylor Swift concert singing one of her songs.
“Bradley Cooper is now a 'Swiftie.' It starts trending on the platform,” she said.
“Because of our previous agreement with LVMH [a luxury goods company with multiple high-end brands], and that Bradley Cooper is an influencer for LVMH. The campaign starts kicking in real-time conversation,” she said, calling it “the holy grail of marketing" with the “right ad, right place, right time.”
The surge in ad revenue has also boosted brand partnerships, Yaccarino further explained, noting the NFL portal that X rolled out this football season, after a soft launch of the Paris Olympic Games. The platform expects to easily expand its global sports portal to include more major sports leagues, she said.
“You know we talk about X as the global town square. Think about the NFL town square. All conversation, all rankings, all stats, all video, all in one place," she said, noting its 36 billion impressions and 4 billion video views so far this NFL season.
Musk as DOGE advisor, X Money and more
Yaccarino did not seem worried when asked how she thinks her boss, Elon Musk, will transition to his new role as co-advisor of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) when President Donald Trump is sworn in on January 20th.
Yaccarino told Herridge that all Americans should be rooting for the success of the new government venture, and expects other countries to follow suit.
“Identifying government waste and inefficiency is beneficial to all of us. And I don't think there are two better people than Elon and Vivek to do that,” she said, referring to former Republican presidential candidate and American entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, appointed by Trump to partner with Musk.
When asked if Musk plans to use X to advance his own agenda to achieve government efficiency, Yaccarino pointed out that Musk is pretty much an open book on the platform when it comes to his vision and views on the world.
“Actually, we should encourage all business leaders, all government leaders, to do exactly the same thing and share more, not less. Exercise our own individual freedom of speech rights, but also our life experiences and what we'd like to share and inspire other people,” Yaccarino explained.
“It's the core foundational value of X, which is protecting the freedom of speech around the world,” she added.
Yaccarino further discussed the most watershed moments on X this year, which centered around Trump and the election, as well as X trying its hat to expand opportunities for journalists to innovate and make money on the platform as legacy media falls to the wayside.
In fact, Yaccarino said the company has already hired former Wall Street Journal editor and bureau chief John Stoll to lead the charge, referring to X as the “number one news app in the world.”
Journalists, content creators, and influencers will additionally be offered more opportunities to earn a living with the expansion of X Money, Yaccarino said.
“X money is going to change both payments and the opportunities for creators on the platform forever. And then you have to talk about Grok, right? So those two things together, profound differentiation for our company and profoundly propelling us at breakneck speed into 2025,” she said.
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