Twitter CEO solicits product feedback as he takes larger role

Jack Dorsey wants Twitter’s users to know he’s listening to them.

His tweet Thursday soliciting product feedback from users drew hundreds of responses, highlighting concerns with everything from abuse on the site to users’ inability to fix errors after they publish tweets.

“We’ll consider everything we heard from you,” Dorsey said Friday on Twitter. “Not going to ship all of it, but will be more transparent about why and what we learned.”

Dorsey is taking more control over Twitter’s product after the company lost its chief operating officer and chief technology officer. Now, out of necessity, the product, engineering and design divisions report directly to him. The product division is run by an executive relatively new to Twitter, Keith Coleman, who joined with an acquisition on December 1.

Twitter, which lets users post 140-character messages and follow the tweets of others, has had trouble defining its vision after years of executive turnover. The San Francisco-based company is under pressure to show it can expand its audience of about 317 million monthly active users, as advertising revenue starts to increase more slowly. Twitter failed to find an acquirer earlier this year and the social media company said in October it would eliminate 9 per cent of its workforce. The shares lost 30 per cent this year, closing Friday at $16.30.

Dorsey summarised user requests on his Twitter account. For addressing abuse, the CEO and co-founder said the “biggest ask was for greater transparency around our actions (or inaction) and faster shipping.” For editing tweets, he said the “clearest ask was to provide a quick way to fix errors. Anything beyond requires showing edit history given tweets are public record.”

People also wanted an easier way to follow topics and understand the flow of conversations, Dorsey said.

Dorsey got the idea to request user feedback via Twitter after Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky did so. Dorsey also solicited product ideas for electronic payments company Square, where he is also CEO. Bloomberg