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Twitter CEO Ev Williams is Stepping Down to Focus On Product

Twitter is replacing CEO (Chief executive officer) and Co-Founder Ev Williams with COO (Chief operating officer) Dick Costolo, so that Williams “be completely focused on product strategy.”. We all were shocked when we saw the blog post by Williams talking about #NewTwitterCEO. Here’s the blog post.

The challenges of growing an organization so quickly are numerous. Growing big is not success, in itself. Success to us means meeting our potential as a profitable company that can retain its culture and user focus while having a positive impact on the world. This is no small task. I frequently reflect on the type of focus that is required from everyone at Twitter to get us there.

This led to a realization as we launched the new Twitter. I am most satisfied while pushing product direction. Building things is my passion, and I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build.

This is why I have decided to ask our COO, Dick Costolo, to become Twitter’s CEO. Starting today, I’ll be completely focused on product strategy.

Twitter was growing in the last two years since Williams was the CEO, he mentioned that when he started there were only 20 employees working at Twitter, today there are 300 employees. Also people were tweeting about 1.25 million tweets a day, now, about 90 million a day. Even in those same two years, Twitter grew from 3 million registered users to more than 160 million today. So, Ev Williams was really a great CEO.

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