After years of stumbling and poor performance, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is finally stepping down as chief executive. The long-awaited move creates an opportunity for the social media platform to establish its footing, but a lot more remains to be done.
On Monday, the company’s board announced that Twitter legend Parag Agarwal, who has served as Chief Technology Officer since 2017, will take over as Dorsey’s CEO, effective immediately. Dorsey will remain on the board until his term ends next year.
Twitter shares initially jumped at the news of Dorsey’s departure, but as the market plunged, news was digested that an internal candidate had been chosen. Investors are right to be concerned. Twitter’s deep problems will require leadership that is ready to act aggressively to right the ship, a tall order for an executive with deep ties to the previous regime.
it’s been a tough year for Twitter, During the company’s analyst day in February, Dorsey talked about a “double growth velocity” of facilities and a big game when it comes to setting new long-term financial goals. But Wall Street has become skeptical of the company’s ability to meet its ambitions after a series of hiatus. of despair. US user growth has been weak. Domestic, monetizable daily active users of the social media app fell in the June quarter from the previous three months. Despite the gains of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Twitter did not add US users to the three months that ended in September, compared to the June quarter, either.
Meanwhile, the initial results of the company’s new initiative have been overwhelming. Twitter shut down its clone Fleets of Instagram Stories and Snapchat Stories a few months after launch amid a lack of interest. Its much-anticipated Super Followers program, which enables users to charge monthly fees for subscriber-only content, and its Twitter Blue paid subscription offering are off to a slow start. And it doesn’t help matters when rivals are flourishing. For example, Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, grew at a faster rate than Twitter in the latest reported quarter, even though its revenue was more than 40 times larger.
It’s not just financial performance. As easy as it is to question Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse ambitions, Facebook’s parent company is serving up the sort of potentially transformative product vision of Twitter.
It is possible that Agarwal has the skills to develop the platform to expand beyond its core users. To start that process, it would have to fundamentally change the way the company approaches product development.
First, listen to users and prioritize the features they care about most, including direct-message search, better analytics, and a long-coveted tweet edit button. For whatever reason, Twitter seems to have ignored the cries of its biggest followers. It’s time to change it.
Second, get the original product execution right. I’m puzzled by the glitches with Communities — a promising new feature designed to compete with Facebook Groups — given that it’s just more tweeting, organized differently. The release for Fleets, a later abandoned Snap rival, and the Live Audio tool space was riddled with technical problems, leaving new users with a bad impression of the service. Features like tips and subscription service Blue are far from the best user experience. Twitter needs to recognize that competent product execution is a minimum requirement to compete in social media, and that a handful of big bets are more likely to move the needle than a stream of half-baked features.
Third, develop a better short-form video strategy. The world is moving towards the short video format popularized by TikTok. YouTube and Instagram are changing their apps. Despite Twitter’s failing history in the category with Vine, it has to figure out a way to participate.
One strange thing about Dorsey’s tenure is that he’s also the top executive at Square Inc., which competed for his attention. Both the financial payments company and Twitter will now benefit from having a full-time CEO.
Other than minor incremental changes, Twitter’s core service hasn’t changed much over the past decade. Agarwal has a chance to make a fresh start. If he takes the right steps, it could be a turning point that investors have been struggling for.
Tae Kim is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. He previously covered technology for Barron’s, following an earlier career as an equity analyst.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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