Indian-American Parag Agrawal has been appointed the new Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, the outgoing CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Monday.
Dorsey has resigned after a 16-year association with the social media giant that he co-founded with Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass.
Agrawal, who has been with the company for over a decade now, joined Twitter in 2011 as a software engineer. The IIT-Bombay graduate in computer science engineering, who also holds a PhD from Stanford University, was promoted to the position of the Chief Technology Officer in 2017.
According to a Reuters report, Agrawal has not only been active in incorporating cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies into the company, but has also been associated with the Twitter-funded organisation Bluesky. This organisation seeks to build a decentralized common standard for social media companies, which would allow different social platforms to operate on the same technology and let users post content across services.
Before joining Twitter, Agrawal worked with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T Labs.
In an e-mail addressed to the Twitter team, he wrote, “Our purpose has never been more important. Our people and our culture are unlike anything in the world. There is no limit to what we can do together.”
He further added, “We recently updated our strategy to hit ambitious goals, and I believe that strategy to be bold and right.”
Recommended
In his e-mail addressed to the company, Dorsey wrote, “There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led.’ Ultimately, I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure that this company can break away from its founding and founders.”
Dorsey’s resignation followed criticism of his leadership of two companies, namely Twitter and Square Inc.
While he will continue to serve on the board of Twitter to help Agrawal through the transition, he added that he would leave at the end of his term in May 2022.