Jack Dorsey to return to Twitter as interim CEO
12 Jun 2015
Jack Dorsey is doing a Steve Jobs for Twitter returning as interim chief executive officer to the company, to a job he had until being pushed out in 2008 from the firm he helped found.
Jobs too had returned to Apple as interim CEO in 1997 after being forced out in 1985, and went on help develop the iMac, iPhone and iPad.
According to commentators, Dorsey's return signals that Twitter was looking for a leader who could inspire confidence in the company's product vision, after a slew of leadership changes in the past five years, tardy growth anticipated and advertising efforts that had failed to deliver.
Dorsey's passion for Twitter, the social-media company which he helped start in 2006 with Evan Williams and Biz Stone, had been evident and even while running Square Inc, a digital-payments company he co-founded in 2009, Dorsey had stayed active as Twitter's chairman, serving as adviser to outgoing CEO Dick Costolo, who took the top post in October 2010.
Costolo abruptly announced he was stepping down yesterday as scrutiny increased of the company's slow user growth and inability to attract advertisers at the same rate as its competitors.
A source familiar with the matter said, it was Costolo's decision to leave, and according to Costolo, he brought it up with the board last year as it started talking about succession planning, Reuters reported.
Costolo said on a conference call that Twitter would consider internal and external candidates for its next CEO and that it had the "strongest management team (it's) ever had," which had been influential in his decision to step down. He said in a statement earlier that he was "tremendously proud" of his six years at Twitter.
Dorsey told Reuters in an interview that he was not thinking "at all" about remaining CEO permanently as the search has just begun but he did not rule out the job. He added he did not anticipate any change in Twitter's strategy or direction.
