Agency Report
Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey will step down from his role and Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal will become his successor, Twitter announced on Monday.
Dorsey’s departure marks the end of his second CEO stint at the social networking site, and he leaves at a time when Twitter has made headlines for its renewed pace of product launches after years of criticism that the site had fallen behind larger rivals like Facebook and new social media apps such as TikTok in innovation.
Despite the quickened pace of new features, shares of Twitter have slumped in recent months, adding pressure on Dorsey to end his unusual arrangement of being CEO of two companies.
Dorsey is stepping down now because he feels confident about his successor and will focus on his payments processing firm Square Inc and other pursuits such as philanthropy, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The company’s board has been preparing for Dorsey’s departure since last year, the source said.
Shares of the microblogging platform surged 9% in early trading, while those of digital payments firm Square Inc (SQ.N), of which Dorsey is also chief executive, were up 3%.
In his latest tweet on Nov. 28, Dorsey said: “I love twitter.” The “likes” on that tweet surged to more than 54,000 on Monday.
CNBC was first to report Dorsey’s move.
