![]() ![]() Nearly every source we’ve spoken to over the past two years, from leadership all the way down to Twitter’s rank-and-file, expected Dorsey to have picked one or the other by now.Īt the same time, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Twitter employee, past or current, who doesn’t believe Dorsey’s heart is in the right place. Twitter’s executive turnover, another major issue, seems to be slowing down, but the company still lost more than a dozen key product and business leaders in the past two years.Īnd Dorsey is still a part-time CEO, as he is also CEO of payments company Square. (Twitter only shares the growth uptick, not the actual figures.) A spokesperson also referenced Twitter’s redesign, its algorithmic timeline and its lite version for international markets as examples of “big bets.” When presented with our reporting, the company pointed out that daily active user growth has increased by double digits for three straight quarters. And it’s bringing in less revenue this year than it did last year.īy all available metrics, Dorsey has failed. The company has added just 21 million new users in the past two years, less than one million a month on average, and last quarter it didn’t add any new users. Twitter’s stock price is down more than 40 percent. ![]() That kind of tepid leadership can be seen in the numbers. In that time, Twitter has survived, but it has failed to take big swings or move with the kind of urgency necessary of a company that’s fighting for its life. One source described the decision as “playing not to lose.”įast-forward 18 months, and Twitter finally did ship longer tweets, though with a much smaller character limit still in place than originally planned.īut that fear of straying too far from what was comfortable - and the protracted two-year timeline from product conception to launch - sums up Dorsey’s return as CEO of the company he founded, which happened exactly two years ago this Thursday. ![]() Launching longer tweets had been one of the company’s top priorities since Dorsey had officially returned as CEO five months earlier, and his comments to Lauer were the first time the group had heard that Twitter’s 140-character limit was sticking around.ĭorsey, according to numerous former employees, had gotten cold feet after users freaked out about the potential change. “It’s a good constraint for us.”īack at Twitter headquarters, the product team that built Beyond 140 was shocked, according to sources. Known internally as “Beyond 140,” the product was fully built, and essentially awaiting the green light for launch.ĭorsey chuckled. Twitter was preparing to launch a feature that would extend that limit almost indefinitely, first reported on Recode a few months earlier. Lauer was talking about Twitter’s iconic 140-character limit for tweets, which had been around since the company’s founding. “Is it staying? And if it’s going away - when?” As the camera panned toward Dorsey - dressed in slim black jeans, a black sweater and bright orange high-tops - host Matt Lauer jumped in with a question. It was March of 2016, and Dorsey was making an appearance on NBC’s “The Today Show” to celebrate Twitter’s 10th anniversary. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey surprised everybody. ![]()
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