On November 29th, Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter. He has been replaced by the company\u2019s chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal.<\/p>\n
Dorsey will remain a member of Twitter\u2019s board until the end of his term in spring 2022. He said in an email<\/a> to Twitter employees that he will not run for reelection, as he \u201cbelieve[s] it\u2019s really important to give Parag the space he needs to lead.\u201d<\/p>\n In the same email, Dorsey mentioned the dangers of a \u201cfounder-led\u201d company as one of his reasons for leaving, writing that \u201cit\u2019s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder\u2019s influence or direction.\u201d He also cited \u201cParag becoming [Twitter\u2019s] CEO,\u201d as Agrawal \u201chas been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around.\u201d<\/p>\n Focusing on advertisement products, Agrawal joined the company as a software engineer in 2011. He was the first to win the company\u2019s \u201cDistinguished Engineer\u201d title and eventually became chief technology officer in 2017. In 2019, as Twitter became increasingly interested in technology decentralization, Dorsey appointed Agrawal to head Project Bluesky, an ongoing initiative to develop a decentralized social network protocol.<\/p>\n Agrawal has been involved in other projects as well. The Twitter Crypto team, first announced in November, reports directly to him and plans to work closely with Bluesky. The Verge<\/a> also writes that Agrawal\u2019s involvement in decentralized Web3 platforms \u201cspeaks to a possible direction for Twitter\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n Again under Agrawal\u2019s leadership, Twitter\u2019s years-long effort to accelerate shipping speeds by moving products from its servers to the cloud services of larger companies, such as Amazon and Google, found success in a partnership with Google Cloud. Still, in terms of technological advances, Twitter is \u201cnowhere close to done,\u201d Agrawal told The Information<\/i><\/a>, \u201cI think we have a lot of opportunities to go even faster and [in] even more noticeable ways in the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n Twitter has been criticized by both ends of the political spectrum for its moderation policies, particularly during Donald Trump\u2019s presidency. Some called for the company to do more to prevent the spread of misinformation and hate speech, while others argued that Twitter was already censoring information. Agrawal has provided insight into how he will handle this issue.<\/p>\n