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Tenure: (2006–2008) & (2015–2021)
Jack Dorsey is an co-founded Twitter in 2006 with entrepreneurs Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass.
He’s most famous for sending the very first tweet: “just setting up my twttr.”
He also came up with the infamous 140-character format for all messages sent on the platform.
As a startup, Twitter was going through significant growing pains during his tenure.
There were frequent service outages and infighting.
Due to management issues, he was quickly replaced by Evan Williams.
Tenure: (2008–2010)
Evan Williams’s time as CEO was notorious for explosive growth—as Twitter went from 3 million to over 160 million users.
Although he was praised for the growing used base, internal conflicts continued to plague the inside of the company.
Williams was also under intense pressure from his investors to achieve profitability.
Eventually, he had to step down and was demoted to focus on product strategy because board members were concerned about his leadership style and decision-making abilities.
Tenure: (2010–2015)
Dick Costolo successfully led Twitter as CEO through its IPO, where the young social platform when from a private company valued at $3.7 billion to $23 billion after it went public.
However, after the IPO, the company struggled to grow its user base.
The period was also filled with platform abuse issues and slow innovation.
Tenure: (2015–2021)
Realizing that Twitter needed to innovate, investors brought back Jack Dorsey for a second time as Twitter CEO.
Though he tried to innovate, the culture of the company was rotted from within.
Dorsey also had to deal with intense content moderation challenges, including the banning of President Trump.
User engagement was at a freefall after the 2020 election.
He eventually had to resign again due to political and investor scrutiny.
Tenure: (2021–2022)
Parag Agrawal had a very brief stint as the CEO of Twitter.
He quickly transitioned from his previous role as CTO following Jack Dorsey’s endorsement.
However, his reign of power ended abruptly when Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion and immediately fired him.
Musk thought Agrawal was too mild-mannered for the role.
Tenure: (2022–2023)
Elon Musk was Twitter’s CEO for eight months after he bought the social platform for an eye watering $44 billion in October 2022.
He brought in dramatic changes:
Under his leadership, Twitter’s value declined, major advertisers departed, and he is rebranding Twitter to “X.”
However, user engagement has skyrocketed since he became CEO, with innovations like blue check marks for all and other innovations in the pipeline.
Tenure: (2023–present)
Linda Yaccarino became Twitter’s (now X) CEO in June 2023,
She has been tasked primarily with rebuilding the platform’s advertising business while working under Elon Musk, who still maintains executive chairman and CTO roles.
She has been tasked with bringing back advertisers and implementing new initiatives like premium memberships and partnerships.
Her tenure has been challenging so far.
With Musk’s unpredictable decisions and ongoing controversies around content moderation.
Only time will tell if she will be effective in the role.
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