Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has stepped down from his role, to make room
for Evan Williams. Twitter announced the news on its blog. Here’s what
Evan Williams said in his post:
“Three years ago during my time as CEO of Odeo, I was lucky to be
working with a software engineer Jack Dorsey who wasn’t afraid to bring
up an idea he’d been thinking about for a long time. What if a simple
status message was the format for a social communication service? We
were exploring various options for Odeo at the time and experimenting
with SMS, so the idea was intriguing. Jack teamed up with Biz Stone to
design a prototype. This simple idea called Twitter proved increasingly
interesting the more we fleshed it out.
After my company Obvious purchased the assets of Odeo which at the time
included Twitter from the shareholders, we decided to form Twitter, Inc
as a separate company founded by myself along with Jack and Biz. Jack
had by then been leading the project for months with Biz’s support, and
I was intent on pursuing Obvious. With my blessing, the reigns of
Twitter CEO were handed to Jack and I accepted a position as Chairman
of the Board.
Rising quickly to the challenge, Jack took Twitter through an order of
magnitude of growth and two major rounds of financing, while safely
navigating some very rocky waters that would have taken even more
experienced leaders down with the ship. Jack is a unique individual
with a knack for artful minimalism and simplicity, combined with great
vision and ambition. We are indeed fortunate to have his guidance.”
Jack remains Chairman, said Evan. “We’re entering a new phase now and there are new kinds of challenges
ahead. Healthy companies acknowledge the need for change even during
the best of times. As Twitter grows both internally and externally, we
took a good look at our path forward and saw the need for a focused
approach from a single leader.”
We wish Jack all the best of luck. So, what’s he doing now? By the looks of it on Twitter, he’s calling his folks.
