CNBC reported this morning that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is expected to step down from his role at the social media company.
Dorsey is the CEO of both Twitter and Square, a financial company that serves both consumer and corporate customers with payment, cash management and transference services.
Twitter’s stock rose on the news that Dorsey may step down, trading up 6.1% as of the time of writing after giving up some early gains in the first minutes of the week’s trading cycle.
The company did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
For comparison purposes, Twitter is worth around $40 billion today. No small number, to be clear, but less than half the value of Square, which has a public-market worth of just over $99 billion.
Running one public company is work. Running two is uncommon and, we presume, not a simple feat. Square shares are also trading higher this morning, albeit to a smaller degree. (Twitter has attracted investor dissent for its CEO’s split time.)
A great product run
Twitter’s leadership and product direction have received criticism over the years for being too conservative or too slow — or both. In recent quarters, however, Twitter’s ability to develop and ship new products and services has accelerated.
Though Twitter’s functionality remained largely stagnant for years — save for some major changes like making tweets longer — the app has introduced a slew of new features and acquisitions.
Twitter entered the live audio race with Spaces, then introduced monetization features, like Ticketed Spaces, Tip Jar and livestream shopping (Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram have also picked up the pace when it comes to e-commerce). More recently, the platform launched its subscription Twitter Blue service, which offers a more customizable user experience — including the ability to undo tweets — for $2.99 per month.
The social giant also opened its checkbook to bring more capabilities to its service. So far this year, Twitter has acquired companies like Threader (which helped develop a thread reading experience for Twitter Blue), Sphere (a group social messaging app), Breaker (which helped build Spaces), and, most notably, Revue, a newsletter platform that gives writers the convenience of linking their posts directly on their profile.
Finally, it’s no secret that Dorsey is interested in crypto — his Twitter bio is literally just “#bitcoin” — but he’s not the company’s only proponent. Twitter has been working on a way for users to display NFTs in their profile and, more broadly, Twitter houses Bluesky, a decentralized web project. Dorsey’s alleged departure may not slow the momentum of Twitter crypto, especially after the company announced earlier this month that it will build a dedicated crypto team.
