2 yıl önce

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey steps down as CEO

Twitter shares rose five percent to $49.47 in morning trading after the announcement.

Reuters

Dorsey will remain a member of the board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has announced he was stepping down as the social media network's CEO, over a year after he survived a bid to oust him by an activist investor.

"I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders," Dorsey said in a statement on Monday.

Dorsey, who also is chief executive of payments company Square, came under pressure in 2020 from Elliott Management amid concerns he had spread himself too thin by running both companies.

The company said Twitter's chief technical officer Parag Agrawal will replace Dorsey in the top post.

"My trust in Parag as Twitter's CEO is deep ... It's his time to lead," Dorsey said.

Dorsey will remain a member of the board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders.

Agrawal is little known

Agrawal is far less well known than Dorsey.

He previously worked at Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T in research roles.

At Twitter, he’s worked on machine learning, revenue and consumer engineering and helping with audience growth.

An immigrant from India, he studied at Stanford and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

As CEO, he’ll have to step out from his largely technical background and deal with the social and political issues Twitter and social media are struggling with, including misinformation, abuse and effects on mental health.

Twitter in March 2020 made a deal with key investors to end an effort to oust the chief, creating a new committee on the board of directors to keep tabs on company leadership.

Like many Silicon Valley celebrities, from Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs to Bill Gates or Michael Dell, Dorsey dropped out of college, never graduating from either of the universities he attended, one in his native Missouri and the other in New York.

Dorsey is credited with coming up with the idea for Twitter when eventual co-founder Evan Williams gave workers at blogging startup Odeo two weeks to work on fun new projects as a way to break up the daily routine.

He ran Twitter in 2007-2008 but returned as CEO after Dick Costolo resigned in June 2015.