“When co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to Twitter as chief executive in 2015, he made it clear the social media company needed to constantly reinvent itself.“
“On Monday, Dorsey handed that undertaking to Parag Agrawal, Twitter's chief technology officer and an architect of the company's effort to create a decentralized and open standard for the social media industry. The 10-year Twitter veteran, who has a Ph.D. from Stanford and an undergraduate degree from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, as the new CEO will now have to balance the projects that set the company up for the future with the daily challenges of a social media platform that is under scrutiny from investors, lawmakers and activists.”
“‘Twitter is in the midst of shaking up its business model,’ Jasmine Enberg, a senior analyst at eMarketer, said in a statement. ‘The ad world is facing real challenges with the new targeting and privacy initiatives, and Twitter is experimenting with new revenue streams to augment its ads business and meet the aggressive revenue goals it set last February. The next CEO will have to face the challenge of making good on those goals.”’
“Twitter's business challenges include issues beyond its control. Changes that Apple introduced to improve privacy on its iOS mobile operating system have made it tougher for advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. That's affected revenue at social media companies, including Twitter. The company hasn't detailed how badly Apple's changes have affected its business, but acknowledged they had a "modest" impact on its third-quarter revenue.”
“Outside of business, Twitter and other social networks have been dealing with criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups.”
“In March, Dorsey appeared alongside Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai at a testy congressional hearing on misinformation, tech addiction and the impact tech companies have on children's screen time. Members of Congress repeatedly interrupted the executives, who avoided providing yes or no answers to questions.”