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Business News/ Companies / News/  IIT Bombay alumnus Parag Agrawal replaces Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO
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IIT Bombay alumnus Parag Agrawal replaces Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO

Jack Dorsey will remain on the board until his term expires in 2022
  • IIT Bombay alumnus Parag Agrawal has been CTO since 2017 and at Twitter since 2011
  • Jack Dorsey has stepped down, ceding the position to the firm's Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal, an IIT Bombay alumnus.Premium
    Jack Dorsey has stepped down, ceding the position to the firm's Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal, an IIT Bombay alumnus.

    Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has stepped down as CEO of the social media platform, the company announced on Monday. He was succeeded by Twitter's current Chief Technology Officer and former IIT Bombay alumnus Parag Agrawal.

    Dorsey will remain on the board until his term expires in 2022.

    Agrawal has been CTO since 2017 and at Twitter since 2011.

    In a letter posted on his Twitter account, Dorsey said he was “really sad...yet really happy" about leaving the company and that it was his decision.

    Dorsey has faced several distractions as CEO, starting with the fact that he’s also founder and CEO of the payments company Square. Critics have long complained that the arrangement has divided his attention to Twitter’s detriment.

    Twitter shares rose 5% to $49.47 in morning trading after the announcement.

    Dorsey became Twitter CEO in 2007, but was forced out the next year. He returned to the role in 2015.

    While Twitter has high-profile users like politicians and celebrities and is a favorite of journalists, its user base lags far behind old rivals like Facebook and YouTube and newer ones like TikTok. It has just over 200 million daily active users, a common industry metric.

    CNBC first reported that Dorsey may step down soon, citing anonymous sources.

    Dorsey is also the top executive at Square, a financial payments company that he founded, and some big investors have openly questioned whether he can be effective leading both.

    Last year, the company came to an agreement with two of those activist investors that kept Dorsey in the top job and gave a seat on the company board to Elliott Management Corp., which owned about 4% of Twitter’s stock, and another to Silver Lake.

    Twitter was caught up in the heated political atmosphere leading up to the 2020 election. Former President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, with Dorsey defending the move, saying the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump's tweets after the event resulted in a risk to public safety and created an “extraordinary and untenable circumstance" for the company. Trump sued the company, along with Facebook and YouTube, in July for alleged censorship.

    The early days of Twitter began with a tweet sent by Dorsey on March 21, 2006, that read “just setting up my twttr." Twitter went through a period of robust growth during its start, but as the growth slowed the San Francisco company began tweaking its format in a bid to make it easier and more engaging to use.

    With agency inputs

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    Updated: 29 Nov 2021, 10:56 PM IST
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