The preliminary response to Jack Dorsey’s ascension to permanent CEO at Twitter this week was mixed: the stock shot up five percent on Wednesday after the news broke, but shares are down 7 percent on Thursday.
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Dorsey has been serving as interim CEO at Twitter ever since Dick Costolo resigned in June. Dorsey became the CEO in 2007 but was ousted the following year as his leadership was branded as subpar by fellow founder Williams.
A distracted CEO juggling two companies, neither of which is a well-oiled machine, may not inspire the investor enthusiasm Square had bet on, financial industry experts told Reuters.
Despite his dual roles, Dorsey appears to be making strides to revamp Twitter – whose active user base has remained stagnant at just above 300 million per month while other social networks, like Facebook and Instagram, have surged ahead. This is one of the biggest differences between the websites, as Twitter displays all tweets in chronological order, which makes it much harder for users who don’t spend each day online to follow everything that is going on. When stacked up against Faceboo, acomparison that may be unjust but is unavoidable nonetheless, Twitter’s anemic user growth really hurts.
But he remains devoted to Square, the payment processing company he founded, and has no intention to step down as CEO.
Twitter is trading under $25, below its $26 initial public offering price.
“Both have indicated to the board, said multiple sources, that they want Dorsey in the top job”. Already, Dorsey is considering doing away with Twitter’s vaunted 140-character limit – a move panned by a few, loved by others – demonstrating he’s willing to explore what many would consider radical changes to get things jump-started.
The seemingly directionless Twitter had only one major ray of hope during these hard times, and that is in the form of its interim CEO, Jack Dorsey, who not only stayed with the company since it was founded in 2006, but kept it alive as well.
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“Current issues at Twitter represent a significant challenge for any CEO; as result, we are unclear as to whether Mr. Dorsey could help drive user growth reacceleration and monetization stability while separately leading an IPO process for Square”.
