Elon Musk has announced his new Twitter chief executive – NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino.

The billionaire said he was “excited” to announce the hiring of Ms Yaccarino – who he said would focus “primarily on business operations” at Twitter.

Musk, who completed a $44bn (£35bn) takeover of the social media site in October, also announced he would take up the role of executive chairman.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief said he would remain directly involved with Twitter as the company’s chief technology officer.

“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter,” he said in a tweet on Friday.

“[She] will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.

“Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”

He added that Ms Yaccarino would take up the role in around six weeks.

NBCUniversal said Ms Yaccarino – the company’s head of global advertising and partnerships – would step down immediately.

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In December, 51-year-old Musk said he would resign as chief executive “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job”.

This came after a poll on the social media site, where 57.5% of users voted for him to leave the position that he took on after buying the platform last year.

Last month, Musk was reminded of the pledge during an impromptu interview on the BBC, where he said: “I did stand down. I keep telling you I’m not the CEO of Twitter, my dog is the CEO of Twitter.”

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Since taking on Twitter, Musk has regularly made light of any controversies, but investors in Tesla have become increasingly concerned that he has been devoting too much time to turning around the platform.

During his first two weeks in the job, he quickly fired Twitter’s previous chief executive, Parag Agrawal, and other senior leaders and then laid off half its staff in November.

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In April, Twitter started to remove its blue ticks from verified accounts, leaving some of the world’s best-known figures without the verification sign.

The platform had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue tick system, many of them athletes, musicians, journalists and other public figures.

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