Interesting tweet from the new CEO (a RT from @avibryant, http://twitter.com/#!/dickc/status/3962807808), likely to be a joke at the time (Sep 13, 2009): First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: undermine CEO, consolidate power
This makes me admire Mark Zuckerberg more as he is heading such a big empire at such a small age! Facebook for sure had lot more challenges than Twitter for their Privacy issues and many new releases. Mark stood strong in all those incidents, and didn't give up. I remember his talk from StarupSchool, and how he was so supportive of Mark Picnus's advice on why founders need to be CEOs of their company.
Why the down votes here? It is pretty damn amazing that not only has Zuckerberg maintained control but he has also been smart enough to bring in talent to help him, personally, scale. It would have been easy for Mark to simply say, "Eh, I need to hire a CEO", or for him to listen to the countless investors and advisors that are almost certainly hinting to him that he should do so.
Why did Ev step down? No one really knows. It, almost certainly, is not because doing so will enable him to now focus on product. As CEO it is quite easy for him to delegate nearly all of those responsibilities he wishes to ignore to Dick. No, giving Dick the title of CEO almost undoubtably has beneath it many more subtle reasons, some of which might simply be that Ev convinced himself he needed to do this for personal reasons. We'll never know, but IMO the "so I can focus on XXX" reason is never the real reason.
Exactly, that was the point. Even Mark Zuckerberg primarily focuses on Product and Platform, whereas COO Sheryl Sandberg focuses on other Biz Dev things.
"Ms. Sandberg has focused on building the business, expanding internationally, cultivating relationships with large advertisers and putting her polish on things like communications and public policy. That has freed Mr. Zuckerberg to focus on what he likes best: the Facebook Web site and its platform."
I totally agree with you on this. Its been remarkable how Mark is handling one of the best companies on planted today. I have been working in startups for more then a decade, and i know how difficult it is to run the show with ups and downs almost everyday. Hope Mark will write a book about how he managed the show.
I went with my bosses to visit one of our competitors a few weeks ago; they invited us for a tour. The CEO of the competitor believed that employee count was a direct indicator of the strength of a business. He bragged about having a staff 3x my company's, but the fact is that based on sales data, we're far more efficient, doing a percentage of their sales larger than the ratio of staff sizes.
Reddit was 4 until recently. They did say they felt like they couldn't really go forward anywhere with that kind of staff although. I don't know if the new 2 hires are enough.
I don't see how it foretells any plans to exit. Perhaps Ev just doesn't have the desire to be CEO of a 300+ person company. It's quite possible Costolo was hired as COO as a way of transitioning him into the CEO spot if he did well. That would certainly seem like a pretty smart strategy.
I believe your information is out of date. In addition to the two major data customers in Google and Microsoft (rumoured to be in the region of $25m/year) it also has advertisers who pay for promoted tweets and promoted hashtags. As for the "at the drop of a hat", of course they could, but why would they?
Actually this may prove more fruitful in the line of Google and MS. I think Google guys did the great thing by choosing a third person as CEO. This gives them more time to think on strategies and decisions.
Recruitment, monetization, and investor relationships are all part of a CEO's core responsibilities, and totally unrelated to building products or attracting users. If Ev wants to focus on those activities, it seems totally reasonable to hand over the CEO role to someone else.
'New Twitter was definitely a trigger for this,' Williams told me. 'Conveniently, I took over the CEO role just about two years ago - and brought Dick in just about a year ago. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a product guy, and New Twitter seems to work out well,' he continued. 'New Twitter was a moment of clarity for all of us here,' Costolo added. '[With this change] Ev can once again focus on product.'
It's good this coincided with me ordering some care from the care factory. HP hiring a no-name for CEO was more interesting. These things don't impact hackers on a day to day. Let's float up the revenue sharing tidbit and discuss that.
