Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is stepping down from his role as the company’s CEO with immediate effect. This was disclosed in a release by the company earlier this evening.
According to the statement, Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer, Parag Agrawal, will take over as CEO. The statement disclosed further that Dorsey will remain on the company’s board until at least next year.
Dorsey was quoted in a statement after the announcement today to have said “I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past ten years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart and soul ” .
When news of Dorsey’s expected departure first broke in the media early today, the company’s shares jumped as much as 10% in pre-market trading before giving up some of those gains.
During Dorsey’s tenure, Twitter achieved profitability, posed its first billion-dollar quarter and began releasing a wide range of features to draw in users. However, Twitter under Dorsey has been unable to design and enforce an efficient set of rules and policies to curb its users against hate speech,violent rhetorics, disinformation and misinformation on its platform.
Dorsey had hinted during the summer that he might be willing to leave Twitter to go and work on a Bitcoin-related venture.
Dorsey first became Twitter’s CEO in 2007 but was forced out of the role a year later. He returned as CEO in 2015.
