Who Is The New Face Of Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal? Here's His Career Journey
JAKARTA - Twitter now has a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Parag Agrawal who replaces Jack Dorsey. One of the founders of Twitter is stepping down after 16 years working at the social media giant from the United States.
Agrawal is not the most famous name both on and off Twitter. However, he has worked at the company for more than a decade. From an engineer to a CEO at his peak
Prior to joining Twitter, Agrawal worked at Microsoft Corp, Yahoo and AT&T Labs Inc in research units. Agrawal has a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, as quoted by Reuters, Tuesday, November 30.
The first time, Agrawal started his career on Twitter in October 2011 focusing on advertising products, and he became the first recipient of the company's "Respected Engineer" title.
He was then appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in October 2017, during which time he took the plunge to tackle high-level issues, such as large-scale password security issues and take on some of the company's bolder initiatives.
Compiled from The Verge, since December 2019, Agrawal has also worked on Project Bluesky, an independent team of open source architects, engineers and designers to combat misleading information on Twitter.
Bluesky is trying to introduce a new decentralized technology, the idea that Twitter and others will become Bluesky's clients and rebuild their platform on top of the standard.
Furthermore, Bluesky has also been on the rise in recent months after a long period of silence. The group put cryptocurrency developer Jay Graber in charge of Bluesky in August, after months of searching for product leads.
Presumably the development of Bluesky and its potential impact in replacing the foundation of the Twitter platform is something that will continue to be a major project for Agrawal as CEO.
In addition, the newly founded Crypto Twitter team led by Tess Rinearson which was announced earlier in November also reported directly on the progress of the project to Agrawal. The team will also work closely with Bluesky, combined with Agrawal's interest in the decentralized Web3 platform.
In addition, Agrawal also hinted at how he will overcome one of Twitter's biggest challenges, namely moderation. In a 2020 interview with the MIT Technology Review, Agrawal stated that Twitter's role is to build a healthy place for online conversation.
It shows that he can allow people to say whatever they want on the platform. "Our role is not bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation," Agrawal said.
Despite that long tenure, Agrawal, who is 37 years old, has not spent much time in the public eye, but is now about to change with his new role in place of Dorsey.