Business Insider's Claire Atkinson has followed Ms Yaccarino's career for two decades and said her background in advertising could help Twitter, which has seen its ad sales drop sharply since Mr Musk's takeover. 

"If Twitter are looking to monetise better than they have been, then that would be the place to start and Linda would be the ideal person to make that happen," the chief media correspondent said.

"She's the kind of person that I can imagine Elon Musk needs," Ms Atkinson added. "She won't be rolled over."

Indeed, her negotiating style within the industry earned her the nickname the "velvet hammer", according to the Wall Street Journal in 2012. 

Ms Yaccarino will face the challenge of running a business that has struggled to be profitable, while facing intense scrutiny over how Twitter handles the spread of misinformation and manages hate speech.

When Mr Musk first started discussing his plans for Twitter last year, he said he wanted to reduce the platform's reliance on advertising and make changes to the way it moderated content.

He also said he wanted to expand the site's functions to include payments, encrypted messaging and phone calls, turning it into something he called X.

But Mr Musk courted controversy when he fired thousands of staff upon his takeover, including people who had been tasked with dealing with abusive posts.

He also overhauled the way the service authenticates accounts, charging for blue ticks in a move critics said would facilitate the spread of misinformation.

Some of the changes raised concerns among advertisers, worried about risks to their brands, who subsequently halted spending on the site.

Mr Musk has acknowledged "massive" declines in revenue, though he told the BBC last month that companies were returning.