The Strategist

Twitter Gets Its Founder Back



10/06/2015 - 13:31



Twitter officially announced that its founder Jack Dorsey has once again been appointed permanent CEO. Shareholders and the company's management hope that the founder will be able to give a new impetus to its development and increase the number of users of the service.



Joi Ito
Joi Ito
In the notification to the Commission on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported that Jack Dorsey, who until recently held the post of Chairman of the Board, now becomes a permanent CEO. Mr. Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006, and left the company in 2008. In 2009, he started a new project - a service for the mobile payments Square, which allowed small private entrepreneurs to make payments directly using a smartphone and a credit card, laminating card through a special reader. Many experts have already stated that Dorsey has opened a new niche in the market, just feeling a promising market of mobile payments. Having received more than $ 500 million from venture investors at the end of 2014, the payments service Square had a total value of $ 30 billion, and its customer base now exceeds 10 million people. In the summer, it was announced that Square is preparing to release an IPO.

Twitter started gradually losing dialed progress after Dorsey’s quit - growth of new users has slowed. In March 2011, the management of Twitter appointed Jack Dorsey to the post of head of the executive board of directors. However, the company continued to show unimpressive results: since the beginning of this year, shares of Twitter fell 25% as the company is not fast enough to recruit new subscribers. Only in the second quarter, the monthly average of active users reached 316 million people, which is 15% more than the year before, yet compared to the first quarter of this year, this figure rose by only 2.6%.  

In July, then- Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo resigned, and Dorsey became the acting general director. Now the company has officially announced that its founder became a permanent CEO. Dorsey himself, who will continue to lead the Square, said in his Twitter: "We will have to work hard to concentrate on those things that we can really do well. In addition, we continue to strengthen our team. " Following the  announcement of the appointment of Jack Dorsey as CEO, Twitter’s shares jumped in price by 6%.   

source: theverge.com