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Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams Steps Down From CEO Spot

Kevin Douglas Grant |
October 4, 2010 | 1:00 p.m. PDT

Executive Editor

Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, has apparently succumbed to internal pressure and resigned as CEO.  The serial entrepreneur has been gradually stepping away from his role throughout the year, and will now hand over the title to former Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo.

Costolo, better suited for the frontman's role, has clearly been eyeing the top spot since coming on as COO in September of last year.  Costolo is the founder of RSS giant Feedburner, sold to Google in 2007. 

The move is all about revenue: Twitter is famously lacking a business model, though the company has been working hard to reverse that with new product and advertising offerings.  The company's board and investors, however, have grown impatient and think that Costolo is the guy to get them to a sustainable path to profitability.

Williams heralds the move in a blog post today:

"During his year at Twitter, [Costolo] has been a critical leader in devising and executing our revenue efforts, while simultaneously and effectively making the trains run on time in the office."

The Wall Street Journal reports today:

"Mr. Costolo previously said in an interview that the company's ad initiatives have exceeded expectations, and that on average 5% of Twitter users who saw an ad on the service interacted with it, a rate that is "an order of magnitude greater" than most online ad campaigns."
It's all about advertising, which Twitter fully understands.  It's all about revenue.  Today, Twitter takes a big step forward by installing a new CEO.


 

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