Yaccarino said she has been inspired by owner Musk's “vision to create a brighter future” and was excited to help “transform the social media platform.”

She was the advertising chief for Comcast NBCUniversal spent several years modernising its ad business, said user feedback is vital to build Twitter 2.0.

Yaccarino will take over a social media platform that has been trying to reverse a plunge in ad revenue and is beset with challenges, and more debt.

Since Musk acquired Twitter, advertisers have fled the platform, worried their ads could appear next to neo-Nazi content and conspiracy theories. Musk claimed he was buying the company because it was being run by the woke to discriminate against “conservatives” whose views never get heard.

More than 80 per cent of Twitter’s staff have fled or been fired.

Late week, US radio broadcaster NPR said it was quitting Twitter after Musk insisted the broadcaster be identified as “state-affiliated media,” branding it the same way as it does as major media outlets in authoritarian countries such as Russia or China. He insisted that the BBC be identified similarly (Brits will remind you that a licence fee pays it).

NPR said all its organisational accounts “will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.”

Musk responded maturely to the news. No, not really, he posted “Defund @NPR,” referencing the activist movement to “defund the police.”

Musk admitted that the label decision was a mistake and that he would consider changing it to “publicly-funded.”

He also said that the New York Times would have to pay to keep its name under the Twitter Blue scheme. Musk said that one of the reasons for this was that he does not want Twitter to boost “some anointed class of journalists” who determine what constitutes news. We guess that means he wants that role.

Musk said Yaccarino would help build an "everything app," which he has previously said could offer a variety of services such as peer-to-peer payments, his selection of an advertising veteran signalled that digital ads would continue to be a core focus of the business.

Assessing his time in charge, Musk said it had been “a stressful situation over the last several months.”

“Were there many mistakes made along the way? Of course,” he said. “But all’s well that ends well. I feel like we’re headed to a good place.”

The thinking man's ham said the company was now “roughly breaking even” thanks partly to the crushing round of layoffs that slashed the payroll to 1,500 staff from 7,000 before the sale.