Rumors have been circulating for some time now that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey might be taking on more of a role at the company, and today Dorsey confirmed he is going to head up product development at Twitter as executive chairman, while also continuing in his existing role as CEO and co-founder of mobile-payment startup Square. The move to give Dorsey more authority at the company appears to be an attempt to show that Twitter is putting more emphasis back on the product, rather than just on making money — something that the social network has been catching a lot of flak about lately. But can Dorsey help steer the company back onto the right track?
The most recent dust-up for Twitter was the response to new rules around using its API for pulling data into third-party applications. In contrast to the more open approach the company took in its early years, where developers were encouraged to create apps and services that leveraged the growing social network, the new rules seemed to clamp down on many aspects of Twitter’s ecosystem. Combined with some heavy-handed responses to Twitter app providers such as UberMedia, this struck many as showing a different — and less attractive — side of the company.
There was also some sharp criticism from users about a recent update to Twitter’s official mobile clients, which introduced a new feature called the Quick Bar (quickly dubbed the “dick bar” after CEO Dick Costolo) — one that seemed designed primarily to push the network’s new advertising-related services. Some users said they felt that Twitter was closing off avenues for alternative app suppliers at the same time as its own apps were becoming less useful.
Dorsey’s return to prominence at Twitter is a reversal of fortune in some ways for the Twitter co-founder and his former boss Evan Williams. Dorsey started Twitter in 2006 as a side project within Odeo, a media startup created by Williams after selling the Blogger platform to Google. It soon became obvious that Twitter was more interesting than what Odeo was originally doing, and Williams shifted his attention to the new service — effectively forcing Dorsey out as CEO, something Dorsey compared to “being punched in the stomach” in a recent profile for Vanity Fair.
Last year, Williams stepped down as CEO to devote more time to Twitter’s product development, and was replaced by former Feedburner chief executive Costolo. So far, there has been no mention of what Williams will be doing in light of Dorsey’s expanded role in developing the product, and sources within the industry say the former CEO is no longer actively involved in Twitter (although he did interview Lady Gaga at the Twitter offices recently).
The big question for Twitter, and for Dorsey, is whether the network can push forward with its attempts to control its ecosystem and find new sources of monetization, while still maintaining the strengths that made Twitter so appealing in the first place. That’s a tough assignment for someone who already has a full-time CEO job at a different company, and the stakes for Twitter continue to rise along with its market valuation.