Jack Dorsey Returns To Twitter As Chief To Shrugs And Quips

SAN FRANCISCO — For the last two years, the normally dapper Jack Dorsey has hardly been seen at the offices of Twitter, the social networking company he co-founded, even though he works a block away.

So he shocked many when he returned on Thursday with a beard so wild that his own mother made fun of it on Twitter.

“He looked like a mountain man back from the wilderness,” not the incoming leader of one of the world’s largest social networks, said one person who has worked closely with Mr. Dorsey in the past but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the unusual circumstances of his return.

Mr. Dorsey, 38, is a figure of legend to newer Twitter employees, and remembered with varying degrees of fondness and fear by those who worked with him during his earlier stints there.

Twitter unexpectedly announced on Thursday that Mr. Dorsey would become its interim chief executive while the company’s board searched for a replacement for Dick Costolo, who will step down on July 1.

As the man who sent the first tweet in 2006 and a product visionary who led the company in its early years, Mr. Dorsey helped make the micromessaging service into a global platform that now has more than 300 million active users, from celebrities like President Obama and Katy Perry whose tweets are followed by millions to ordinary people with just a few dozen followers.

 

But Mr. Dorsey was also a major player in the executive turmoil that has plagued the company throughout its existence, most recently in 2011 when he briefly oversaw product development after he helped install Mr. Costolo as chief executive in a boardroom coup that ousted another co-founder, Evan Williams, from the job.

Mr. Dorsey was the driving force for many of Twitter’s product innovations during that time, like the ability to embed tweets on other sites, but was also a polarizing figure, firing product managers and fostering an atmosphere of secrecy and paranoia, according to current and former associates.

Mr. Costolo, a former entrepreneur and stand-up comedian, has strived to create a more open, collaborative culture at the company.

He has built up Twitter’s advertising business, but has largely failed to fix persistent product problems that make it difficult to attract new users.

Mr. Costolo has also been criticized for making rapid-fire decisions without a clear strategy guiding them.

It is not clear what role Mr. Dorsey — Twitter’s chairman as well as the chief executive of Square, an e-commerce company — played in Mr. Costolo stepping aside.

Mr. Costolo declined to comment on Friday, and Twitter spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Twitter’s board declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Square.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/technology/jack-dorsey-returns-to-twitter-as-chief-to-shrugs-and-quips.html