Jack Dorsey And Social Media's Midlife Crisis

Twitter and Facebook are increasingly burdened by political controversy, unlike the cryptocurrency landscape, which has inherited the freewheeling attitude that characterised the early days of social media platforms.

- Theo Tzanidis

When Mr Jack Dorsey made the sudden public announcement that he had quit as CEO of Twitter, it was only ever going to have happened in one place – Twitter itself. It reminded me very much of Mr Elon Musk’s entertaining tweet adventures, as Mr Dorsey tossed his resignation letter onto the social media platform that he co-founded. You could imagine him sitting back to soak up the theatre of reaction and speculation that unfolded.

This isn’t Mr Dorsey’s first resignation letter to Twitter – he was forced out of the CEO chair in 2008 only to return as executive chairman three years later – and no one can say for sure if it will be the last.

According to the e-mail sent to Twitter staff in which he announced his latest resignation, he thinks the firm should “stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction”. In the ensuing tweet storm after he then put the news on Twitter, he insisted it had been his decision. So what does it all add up to?

Mr Dorsey’s move was not entirely unexpected. For more than a year, he has been under intense pressure from activist investors to accelerate Twitter’s development and improve its financial performance.

Wall Street investors have criticised his outside interests, which include running payments giant Square, which he founded during his last Twitter exile, as well as pursuing futuristic projects centred around decentralising (meaning removing traditional corporate control from) the Internet and finance.

Notably, Twitter’s share price shot up with the announcement, only to be pulled down with the rest of the market as it worries about the Covid-19 Omicron variant.

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