Jack Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter back in 2006, has relinquished his title as CEO of the massive social media network with a surprise announcement.
Almost as synonymous with Twitter as Mark Zuckerberg was with Facebook, Jack Dorsey has now resigned as CEO from the social media network that he cofounded in 2006, in news that took the internet by surprise on 30 November.
Tweeting from his personal account, the very first on the website that is simply named @jack, he published his final letter of resignation to the company:
not sure anyone has heard but,
— jack⚡️ (@jack) November 29, 2021
I resigned from Twitter pic.twitter.com/G5tUkSSxkl
The underlying reason that Dorsey gives for his resignation is that companies can be limited by being run by their founders, and that new leadership can help them grow and develop. In this case, the new management will be led by Parag Agarwal, the current Chief Trading Officer of the company, who Dorsey generously describes as “curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware, and humble.”
The Guardian reports that shares in Twitter swiftly rose by 11% after the news broke, before trading was suspended.
In recent years, Twitter’s model has changed in a couple of substantive ways. Firstly, in the wake of false claims about the US presidential election and the coronavirus pandemic, tweets have been flagged as misleading or deleted by the platform. This has been a controversial practice, with some supporters claiming that it has helped to combat misinformation, while others have argued that it is a form of censorship from an unaccountable company.
Twitter has also recently introduced a paid subscription service called Twitter Blue, which boasts exclusive features for subscribers and has thereby ushered in a two-tier system of users.
Major questions for the new CEO will include how he will deal with issues such as these in the future, as the role of social media networks in public discourse becomes more scrutinised than ever.
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