New York, 12 May 2023 (dpa/MIA) - Elon Musk has named NBC Universal's head of advertizing Linda Yaccarino as the new chief executive of social media platform Twitter.

"I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!" Musk tweeted on Friday, confirming media reports.

"@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology," he added. "looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app."

Yaccarino was most recently in charge of the advertizing business at NBC Universal, a media giant.

Yaccarino's decades of experience could help Twitter bring some calm to key advertizers that Musk scared off with his erratic leadership style.

Musk had tweeted on Thursday about his imminent resignation as chief executive of Twitter and said a successor has been found.

Musk, who also heads the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX, had already announced his intention to relinquish the top post at the end of 2022 - but not until his successor had been appointed.

He took over the chief executive post in the course of his approximately $44-billion purchase of the internet platform in October. However, Musk had always signalled that this was not a permanent solution.

Musk's half-year tenure as the head of Twitter has been marked by chaos and controversy. After a series of highly controversial decisions, momentum for him to leave the top post grew stronger.

His resignation announcement in December was preceded by a Twitter poll initiated by himself, in which around 57.5% of participants voted in favour of him stepping down. Musk had said at the time that he would abide by the vote's outcome.