This week, the big news in the social media world was the naming of Twitter’s new chief executive — Linda Yaccarino, who was NBCUniversal Media LLC’s head of advertising.

“@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations while I focus on product design and new technology,” Elon Musk tweeted Friday. “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”

The bottom line is that Musk’s plans to monetize the platform with Twitter Blue have been a failure, as theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier (pictured, left) put it on the latest episode of theCUBE podcast.

“He then lost all the advertisers. All the advertisers basically were boycotting it, and he lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” Furrier said. “Bringing [Yaccarino], media, business, I think that’s a good sign. It’s a good call.”

Twitter’s other big splash this week — the news that former Fox News host and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson would launch a new version of his show on Twitter — didn’t do much to inspire confidence in theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante (right).

“You think Tucker Carlson is going to help you get advertisers back? I mean, they were leaving in droves from Fox,” Vellante said. “Isn’t that really, ultimately, why he got fired?”

There’s no way simply having Tucker’s presence on Twitter would drive him off the platform, according to Vellante.

“Bring Anderson Cooper on Twitter as well. Don Lemon,” he said. “Get Lemon and Tucker going at it. You know, Bill Maher, bring him on. I’d love to see it.”

The social experiment is going to play out, according to Furrier, who added he is a loyal Twitter user.

“A lot of people aren’t on Twitter. I mean, I like Elon, what he’s doing. I like the fact that he’s putting it out there. He is weird, but that’s who he is,” Furrier said. “He doesn’t hide it. And I thought his Bill Maher interview was pretty phenomenal. And Bill Maher was giving him props, saying at least you’re building stuff.” 

Things are happening fast in AI

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported about this year’s cryptocurrency conference in Miami and how the city’s love affair with crypto has seemingly waned. But what has started killing crypto has a lot to do with what’s been going on in artificial intelligence, according to Furrier.

“There are some real technical things happening very fast in AI that are intoxicating to the folks that get attracted to crypto from the alpha nerd standpoint,” he said. “The stuff going on around databases, infrastructure, things like vector databases and embeddings, semi-structured data and unstructured data getting indexed.”

This week, Vellante and Furrier also discussed recent big announcements in the world of AI, including IBM Corp. debuting Watsonx, a product suite designed to help companies more easily build and deploy AI models. Though he wasn’t a fan of the name or the launch, IBM has a lot of smart people working at the company and has done its research, according to Furrier.

“AI is changing so fast, They can get back in the game. That’s why I don’t like the [Watsonx] name. I’d like something new and fresh to align with the generation of developers that are doing it,” he said. “It sounds old hat to me.”

Still, IBM has a well-known brand with great relationships, according to Vellante.

“They have awesome go-to-market channels and fantastic consulting, services and system integration. They’re going to do very well in the marketplace,” he said. “Whether or not they can actually supercharge their growth and maintain a high single-digit growth rate, I think, remains to be seen.”

IBM acquired Red Hat Inc. in October 2018 for $34 billion, a move that was sort of a “Hail Mary” to save the company, according to Vellante.

“Without Red Hat, IBM, in my view, would be largely irrelevant. Because they were able to bring in Red Hat, it solidifies their hybrid cloud strategy, it gives them open source chops, and it gives them much more significant relevance in the developer community and in the IT community in general,” Vellante said.

All of that is being played out at the Open Source Summit, Furrier said, where IBM is attending.

“Red Hat is here. IBM is here. There’s a lot of people jazzed up at IBM,” he said. “I think AI could be their tailwind if they don’t screw it up.”

Open Source Summit community is engaging

On site to record the podcast at the Open Source Summit in Vancouver, Canada, Furrier saw firsthand how developers, technologists and community leaders were collaborating and engaging on open-source innovation. The industry is changing and growing quickly, and there’s an opportunity right now to shape the change rather than restrict it, according to Furrier.

“This is going to be an issue around bottoms-up, top-down management. Like, we’re here at Open Source Summit. This is a power dynamic that has been figured out,” Furrier said.

It’s going to be a very historic moment approaching, according to Furrier, with open-source, cloud-scale software providing societal benefits on the application side of things.

“I think we need leaders and journalists who are going to share the data,” he said.

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Linda Yaccarino, CEO of Twitter

Tucker Carlson, commentator

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors

Mike Lynch, founder of Invoke Capital

Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission

Jim Zemlin, executive director of Linux Foundation

Ken Jennings, author and Jeopardy! Host 

Bob Picciano, member of advisory board at SolarWinds

Ginni Rommety, co-chairman of OneTen,  former CEO of IBM

Sam Palmisano, president and CEO of HealthLink, former CEO of IBM

Megyn Kelly, conservative journalist

Don Lemon, anchor and journalist

Anderson Cooper, anchor 

Bill Maher, comedian, political commentator, writer, producer, actor, TV host

Gary Gensler, chairperson U.S. SEC

Bernie Madoff, mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme

George Carlin, late comedian

Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO and chairman of Apple Inc.

Meg Whitman, CEO of Quibi, former president and CEO of HPE

Leo Apotheker, director of Schneider Electric, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Charles Fitzgerald, author

Keith Townsend, founder of CTO Advisor

Martin Casado, partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Sarah Wang, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Gleb Budman, CEO and co-founder of Backblaze

David Friend, CEO of Wasabi

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon

Lori MacVittie, F5 distinguished engineer

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Photo: SiliconANGLE