Jack Dorsey Leaves Dozens Of Homework For New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Anything?

JAKARTA - Jack Dorsey left Twitter again after six years in the office in 2015. However, Dorsey left social media now with many challenges for his successor.

Back in 2015, employees and investors were quite worried about the dual role of Dorsey, who also serves as CEO of Square. Allegedly at that time, will cause various problems in the company.

“Many are concerned about the prospect of Dorsey's temporary position becoming permanent, given his divisive and sometimes erratic management style and the fact that he has been laid off and returned to his previous company", the New York Times wrote in 2015.

The company's situation at that time was indeed facing chaos, where Twitter was experiencing sluggish user growth. As a result of the lack of updates, the addition of features that have not come for years. There is also uncontrolled harassment on the micro-blogging site.

However, since Dorsey's arrival, the company's turnover began to rise and Twitter began to grow again. Unfortunately, the platform is still struggling with harassment, despite its concerted efforts to encourage healthy conversation and has improved its policies against hate speech.

Under Dorsey's leadership, recently the company has revamped its core features and created a new source of revenue. In the last year alone, Twitter has introduced features for live audio, groups, and payments.

Twitter is rolling out creator-focused features like Super Follows and gaining a newsletter platform for long-form content. Last month, it also introduced a subscription service, Twitter Blue. There is also BlueSky, a plan to create a decentralized standard for social media platforms.

Old Challenges for New CEOs

However, the new Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, will still inherit the challenge alongside all the new projects. While the company has made strides in promoting healthy conversation, it's also grappled with between free speech and toxicity, especially when political figures are involved.

Like any other platform, companies have had and will struggle to contain misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and presidential elections.

“Dorsey left a mixed legacy, a useful and powerful platform for fast communication, but a platform that has been exploited by various bad actors, including former US President Donald Trump, doing their best on Twitter to undermine democracy, until Dorsey's people finally shut down his account", said NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights deputy director, Paul Barrett.

Citing Engadget, Wednesday, December 1st, Twitter under Dorsey finally permanently banned Donald Trump which only made the company more of a target for politicians. And that's unlikely to change just because of Twitter's new CEO.

Agrawal is taking over social media platforms while facing greater reckoning about their role in society. As lawmakers keep an eye on regulatory algorithms and other reforms, Twitter has begun researching algorithmic amplification and the potential for accidental harm caused by its ranking system.

Now it's up to Agrawal as to how to direct the work while navigating the scrutiny of MPs. He will also inherit the ambitious goals that Twitter set earlier this year.

Where the platform will double its revenue and grow its user base to 315 million daily active users which can be monetized by the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, there are some signs that Agrawal may be in the right position to make that happen. While Dorsey's Twitter has been slow to make decisions and release updates, Agrawal is known to be the backer behind new features like Bitcoin tipping and the Bluesky project.

For information, Twitter has been betting that it is moving away from ads and leaning towards subscription services and other new features. And it's not clear how the company can easily persuade the majority of users to start paying for additional content or premium features.

Apparently, Agrawal is well aware of the challenges ahead, “We recently updated our strategy to achieve ambitious goals, and I believe that strategy should be bold and true", Agrawal said in an email to employees.

"But our critical challenge is how we work to counter it and deliver results."