“Parag understands Twitter and appreciates the company’s unique potential. He has been instrumental in tackling our most important priorities, including accelerating our development velocity, and I know he’ll hit the ground running to strengthen execution and deliver results. The board has the utmost confidence in Parag.”

Dorsey’s departure marks the end of his second CEO stint at the social networking site. He leaves at a time when Twitter has made headlines for its renewed pace of product launches after years of criticism that the site had fallen behind larger rivals like Facebook and new social media apps such as TikTok in innovation.

Despite the quickened pace of new features, shares of Twitter have slumped in recent months, adding pressure on Dorsey to end his unusual arrangement of being CEO of two companies.

Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 and became CEO the following year. In 2008, co-founder Ev Williams and board member Fred Wilson pushed out Dorsey as the social media site gained steam with users and they determined he was unfit to lead the company.

However, after years of stagnant growth and a slumping share price, Dorsey returned as CEO in 2015 while continuing to lead Square.

In early 2020, Dorsey faced calls from Elliott Management to step down, after the hedge fund argued he was paying too little attention to Twitter while also running Square.

Dorsey fended off the pressure by giving Elliott and its ally, buyout firm Silver Lake Partners, seats on Twitter’s board.

Reuters, Bloomberg

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