Jack Dorsey Returns To Twitter As Permanent CEO

It has been seven years since Jack Dorsey was ousted as Twitter’s CEO and Dick Costolo took the reigns. However, Jack is finally back and yesterday he announced that he is the new permanent CEO of Twitter and Square. I love Twitter and I know lots of our readers love Twitter. The service has been great for business, SME’s in particular have formed communities together and have helped each other out. Twitter has helped grow and nurture businesses, however, despite the joy that you or I may get from the service, Twitter is in trouble. However, Jack took to his Twitter page yesterday to announce his return.

We are naming @adambain COO of Twitter, we're working to change the composition of our Board, and I will serve as CEO of Twitter and Square!

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

I've been CEO of both companies for over 3 months now. I have the smartest, strongest, and most determined leaders in the world on my teams.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

My focus is to build teams that move fast, and learn faster. In the past 3 months we have increased our speed and urgency at both companies.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

A few things about each company, and their impact in the world. What we stand for gives us purpose, and that purpose dictates our job ahead.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

Square stands for economic empowerment. We stand for financial systems that serve instead of rule. We stand for leveling the playing field.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

Square is the most powerful set of tools to start, run & grow a business. Download Square, start selling. Download Square, get cash to grow.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

Twitter stands for freedom of expression. We stand for speaking truth to power. And we stand for empowering dialogue.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

Twitter is the most powerful communications tool of our time. It shows everything the world is saying rn…10-15 minutes before anything else.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

Both companies have strong businesses and are well positioned to grow their impact in the world. I will do whatever it takes to ensure that.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

We're working hard at Twitter to focus our roadmap on a few things we can make really great. And we're strengthening our team along the way.

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

Our work forward is to make Twitter easy to understand by anyone in the world, and give more utility to the people who love to use it daily!

— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015

Twitter needs to change, it needs to grow and expand. Twitter needs to introduce and develop new features and it needs to appeal to a larger audience because at the moment it is stagnating and struggling to keep up with other social media platforms. This may not be a move that will please the Twitter elite, often I see people saying that Twitter needs to be left alone, they need to stop “messing with it” and let Twitter be Twitter.

The problem is this approach is not going to work anymore. Jack’s first priority will be to make Twitter more appealing to more people. Thats a tall order and his to-do list includes a simpler, more visually appealing interface so that regular folks and new members on the network can follow topics, people and live events easily. At the moment the interface is an utter mess, the only thing that keeps the Twitter mobile app marginally ahead of third party clients is that Twitter restrict certain API access. So if you want the full Twitter experience on mobile you have no choice but to use the Twitter app.

When you try out a client such as Tweetbot 4 and then you go back to Twitter you quickly see just how messy the official Twitter app really is. Jack told investors on Monday that he has already made improvements over the summer as interim CEO. These include the ability to send DM’s with more than 140 characters and also by making it easy for users to purchase products with a ‘buy now’ button.

He said that his team have been, “plotting out ambitious road maps for 2016,” across Twitter and its video streaming services, Periscope and Vine. Jack will also remain as the CEO of Square, the mobile payments company which he founded in 2009. Investors seemed to be pleased with the news that Dorsey has the permanent CEO role as shares rose more than 7% on Monday.

In July, Twitter said that the number of people logging into the service at least once a month rose 3% to 316 million, however, in comparison Facebook has about 1.5 billion people logging in regularly to use the service so Twitter has a lot of catching up to do. Twitter is expected to launch Project Lightning over the upcoming months to help attract new users. This is a service which will highlight curated streams of tweets, photos and videos from live events such as concerts, breaking news and sports.

In the meantime, Jack has already made his first change as the permanent CEO of Twitter, bigger emoji in direct messages.

It is a smart move from Twitter as the emoji now look more like stickers which have become hugely popular on Facebook and Snapchat. At the moment the changes are visible on the official Twitter app and the Twitter website, it is unclear if these changes are going to be brought to third party clients as well.

Emojis are already a big deal in Direct Messages. We just made them bigger. Send super-sized emojis today! pic.twitter.com/4mBLKRQGNL

— Twitter (@twitter) October 5, 2015

The task for Twitter now is for Dorsey to show investors that Twitter has high potential and that he can deliver. It may upset a small section of the Twitter elite, they may decide to head elsewhere, but for Twitter the game now has to be about pulling in the larger numbers and the only thing that is going to do that is significant change.