Twitter Inc named co-founder Jack Dorsey as chief executive officer, betting its co-founder and former leader will be able to revive fortunes at a social-media company that failed to impress investors following its 2013 initial public offering. Dorsey, 38, will also keep his job as CEO of mobile- payments company Square Inc, the payments and financial services company he co-founded in 2009, Twitter said Monday in a filing.
"My focus is to build teams that move fast, and learn faster," Dorsey said in a tweet. "In the past 3 months we have increased our speed and urgency at both companies."
The pick may make it easier to restore confidence at Twitter amid management turmoil and slowing growth; Dorsey has already been involved in its operations as interim chief. Still, it indicates that the board failed to find a CEO that could be fully dedicated to addressing Twitter's issues. The social-media company hired Spencer Stuart in June to run the search and has considered candidates including former Cisco Systems Inc executive Padmasree Warrior and CBS Interactive Inc President Jim Lanzone, people familiar with the matter have said.
The stock, which had declined 26 percent since the search began in June, gained 2.5 percent to $26.98 at 8:09 a.m. in New York, before the markets opened. Twitter also promoted Adam Bain to chief operating officer. Bain, 42, had been president of global revenue and partnerships since 2010. Former CEO Dick Costolo resigned from the board last Wednesday, the company said.
Twitter hasn't lived up to the growth investors expected after its November 2013 initial public offering. The service, with 316 million monthly active users, has been eclipsed in size by properties owned by Facebook Inc such as WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. Twitter's revenue in the first quarter missed expectations for the first time. Costolo gave Twitter a bigger audience without increasing signups, for example, by distributing Tweets on different Web properties. He also shuffled his leadership team, including by ousting his chief operations officer and replacing his finance chief, his head of engineering and two heads of product.
