Should Twitter Hire Marissa Mayer As Its New CEO?

Marissa Mayer is frequently criticized for her performance as the CEO of Yahoo! Inc. YHOO, but could she do better at another firm? Twitter Inc TWTR has been on the hunt for a new CEO ever since Dick Costolo announced his resignation. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, took over as interim CEO to lead the company until it finds a proper replacement. "I don't have the sense on a specific name," Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told Benzinga. "Maybe what Wall Street would really like is somebody who [is]…a business expert and somebody [who]...knows how to play [the game on] Wall Street. I think they'll get that." Moorhead said that he expects Twitter to get someone with an "iconic reputation" who has been on the sidelines for a few years and wants to get back to work. "Marissa Mayer [at] Yahoo -- I would expect somebody like that to head up Twitter," Moorhead added. "In fact, I think Twitter is a better company for Marissa Mayer to be at than Yahoo."

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'Wrong Job'

Contrary to the negativity toward Mayer, Moorhead believes investors would accept her as the CEO of Twitter. "I think when people look at what she was good at, she wasn't a good play-from-behind player," said Moorhead. "She demonstrated that when she's ahead, she can keep that lead moving in a lot of the different areas she was in." In short, Moorhead said that he thinks Yahoo was the "wrong job" for her. "It was a turnaround, and she's never demonstrated turnaround expertise," Moorhead continued. "Sure, she's shown expertise in digital, but she's always been ahead and she's always had unlimited resources with [the Google] brand that was not playing from behind, it was always playing ahead." Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.