After Twitter‘s former CEO Dick Costolo resigned three months ago, the company entered a unusual period of uncertainty.
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Twitter Inc. has appointed Co-Founder and Interim Chief Executive Jack Dorsey as permanent CEO on Monday.
Twitter shares had already accounted for the news, rising to $27.33 on Thursday following a report that Dorsey would be named permanent CEO.
Jack Dorsey, new CEO of Twitter. The company’s stock jumped over five percent earlier today when Recode broke the story that Twitter would name Dorsey as it’s new CEO before the official announcement.
Twitter has announced that it plans to rework its board of directors, including bringing in a chairman from outside the company.
Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006, at a time when social media had just begun to capture people’s attention. The short messaging service has amassed more than 300 million users, but its growth has been slowing to the frustration of investors even as people spend more time online, particularly on their smartphones.
Kevin Landis, portfolio manager at the Firsthand Technology Value fund, said Dorsey should focus on innovation and on finding ways to make Twitter as much as part of its user’s daily lives as Facebook is to its users. Still, it indicates that the board failed to find a CEO that could be fully dedicated to addressing Twitter’s issues.
The cloudy prospects prompted investors to jettison Twitter shares, forcing the company’s stock 8.4 percent lower. He was a member of the board since May 2007.
According to the filing made with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr. Dorsey will not be paid any direct compensation for his role. Increasing the length of tweets, though, might alienate a few of Twitter’s most loyal and active users, who have embraced the 140-character limit as an exercise in eloquence.
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Instead, Bain opted for the role of Chief Operating Officer-a step up from President of Global Revenue and Partnerships. During a call with investors following the news, Dorsey assured them that the micro-blog’s product teams have plotted “dramatic evolution across Twitter, Periscope and Vine” coming next year.
