Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey steps down as CEO
Twitter has announced that its co-founder Jack Dorsey will be stepping down as CEO of the social media platform.
He will be succeeded by Twitter’s current chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal.
Dorsey will, however, remain on the board until his term expires in 2022.
Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011 and has been CTO since 2017.
In a letter posted on his Twitter account, Dorsey said he was “really sad…yet really happy” about leaving the company and that it was his decision. On Sunday, Dorsey had sent a cryptic tweet reading only “I love Twitter.”
Twitter shares rose 5% in morning trading after the announcement.
Dorsey has faced several distractions as CEO, starting with the fact that he’s also founder and CEO of the payments company Square. Some big investors have openly questioned whether he could effectively lead both companies.
Last year, the company came to an agreement with two of those activist investors that kept Dorsey in the top job and gave a seat on the company board to Elliott Management Corp., which owned about 4% of Twitter’s stock, and another to Silver Lake.
While Twitter has high-profile users like politicians and celebrities and is a favorite of journalists, its user base lags far behind old rivals like Facebook and YouTube and newer ones like TikTok. It has just over 200 million daily active users, a common industry metric.
Dorsey became Twitter CEO in 2007, but was forced out the following year. He returned to the role in 2015. In his goodbye letter, Dorsey said he has “worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders” and that to focus too much on whether companies are led by their founders is “severely limiting.”
Twitter also announced on Monday a new board chairman, Bret Taylor, to replace its existing chair, Patrick Pichette. Pichette will remain on the board. Taylor has been on Twitter’s board since 2016 and is the president and COO of business software company Salesforce.
