WASHINGTON: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey resigned on Monday as the social media network’s CEO, after surviving an activist investor’s bid to oust him in 2020 and steering the firm during the tumult of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Dorsey — who also is chief executive of payments company Square — confronted during his tenure thorny freedom of speech issues, ways to make the platform profitable and pressure he had spread himself too thin.

With his recognisable look — shaved head and long beard, and his atypical style — Dorsey for years has embodied Twitter alone.

“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder led.’ Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure,” he wrote in an email to Twitter staff.

“I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it. It was a tough one for me, of course,” he added.

The company said Twitter’s chief technical officer Parag Agrawal will replace Dorsey in the top post, with Dorsey remaining a member of the board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders.

Like many Silicon Valley celebrities, from Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs to Bill Gates or Michael Dell, Dorsey dropped out of college, never graduating from either of the universities he attended, one in his native Missouri and the other in New York.

Dorsey is credited with coming up with the idea for Twitter when eventual co-founder Evan Williams gave workers at blogging startup Odeo two weeks to work on fun new projects as a way to break up the daily routine.

He ran Twitter from 2007-2008 and returned later as CEO after Dick Costolo resigned in June 2015.

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2021