Apple’s next CEO will oversee a $4 trillion tech giant, but isn’t on LinkedIn. Can today’s leaders still skip social media?

Apple’s incoming CEO doesn’t have a single post on his LinkedIn feed, and his profile is nearly blank.

John Ternus, Apple’s hardware chief and a longtime company veteran, is set to take the reins of one of the world’s most admired companies on Sept. 1, succeeding Tim Cook. The outgoing CEO will become executive chairman and retain his megaphone of over 15 million on X, while handing the operating job to someone with almost no public presence at all. 

Despite leading a cornerstone of Silicon Valley, Ternus maintains a strikingly minimal digital footprint: just two roles listed on LinkedIn and no visible activity. Following Apple’s succession announcement in April, social media users were quick to seize on the irony. “In a world obsessed with personal brands, Apple just chose the guy who doesn’t have one,” one LinkedIn user wrote.

That makes Apple’s new boss an outlier at a moment when over two-thirds of Fortune 100 CEOs now have at least one social media profile, and of those post at least monthly, according to a 2025 report from communications advisory firm H/Advisors Abernathy. His quiet feed is hard to miss: as companies increasingly push their executives to cultivate personal brands online, Apple’s next chief executive appears to have opted out entirely. And while his predecessor, Tim Cook, has no LinkedIn presence of his own, he still maintains a massive audience on X, where he shares routine updates and product announcements with his over 15 million followers. Apple did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment for this article. 

I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and thank you for believing in me to lead the company that has always put you at the center of our work. This is not goodbye. It’s a hello to John and I can’t wait for you to get to know him like I do! 🙏 pic.twitter.com/Q43QDG3UmZ— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 21, 2026

I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and thank you for believing in me to lead the company that has always put you at the center of our work. This is not goodbye. It’s a hello to John and I can’t wait for you to get to know him like I do! 🙏 pic.twitter.com/Q43QDG3UmZ

The job description for Fortune 500 CEOs has quietly expanded: Run the company, manage Wall Street, and act as a full‑time content creator in public. But Ternus may be less of an outlier than he seems. Even as many corporate leaders embrace LinkedIn and other social platforms for visibility and influence, a smaller cohort of executives at some of America’s largest companies continues to buck the trend.

The C-suite goes creator‑mode

Some CEOs embraced this shift early. Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps the original social‑native chief executive, regularly shares glimpses of his personal life—Brazilian jiu‑jitsu bouts, mixed martial arts training, and even surfing while holding an American flag and a beer—alongside tightly produced product announcements. Elon Musk turned X, the platform he owns, into his megaphone, posting such a firehose of commentary that people literally place bets on how many times he will post in a given week. His effusive posting style has even at times moved Tesla stock and attracted regulatory attention thanks to an infamous 2018  “funding secured” tweet that triggered an SEC investigation, a settlement that cost him his position as chairman, plus a $20 million fine. 

Others, like Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, General Motors’ Mary Barra, and TIAA’s Thasunda Brown Duckett, take a more buttoned‑up approach, using LinkedIn as a controlled environment for polished product updates, employee kudos, and highlights from interviews and speaking engagements. Now, executive social media operates as an informal internal town hall.

Either way, the modern C-suite, especially the corner office, has effectively turned into a content studio, whether leaders like it or not. Today’s CEOs and executives are expected to be always-on creators:........

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