Dorsey: ‘It all went south’ after Musk bought Twitter
In a discussion started by Bluesky users, Dorsey criticizes Musk’s leadership of Twitter, saying he should have paid the penalty to back out of buying the platform.
I think he should have walked away and paid the $1b.
Asked whether he thinks Musk is the right leader for Twitter, Dorsey replied:
No. Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad. Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south.
Dorsey (still a Twitter shareholder) also said he is glad new platforms like Bluesky are appearing.
The Twitter Files 1: How and why Twitter blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story
Musk releases The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story, though journalist Matt Taibbi. In a 30-plus post thread, Taibbi relates how Twitter executives blocked the New York Post’s October 14, 2020, Hunter Biden laptop story, using the excuse that it was ‘hacked’, despite having received no notification or confirmation from law enforcement that the laptop actually was hacked. The posts were given warnings and were blocked from being to be shared on Twitter’s direct message system. Taibbi says that executives did this without CEO Dorsey’s knowledge.
The posts details how political parties were able to contact Twitter executives to censor stories, and show communications between ex-staff, including Gadde, Roth, discussing the block.
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
Character limit change
Dorsey says Twitter is considering to expand the character limit of tweets from 140 characters to 10 000.
https://twitter.com/jack/status/684496529621557248/photo/1
Apologizes to developers
At the Twitter Flight Developer Conference Dorsey apologizes for Twitter’s past behavior and says he is committed to try to improve developer relations.
Our relationship with developers got confusing, unpredictable. We want to come to you today and apologize for the confusion…We need to have a better conversation with our developer community, with everyone in this room… We can’t stand alone. We need your help…Tweet at us what you’d like to see at Twitter. Tweet with the hashtag #helloworld, we will take all of this information and input to make decisions over time to make sure the platform is something you’re proud of and will use more and more.
336 jobs cut
In a posting to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter announces that 336 jobs will be cute, 8% of its workforce.
The restructuring is part of an overall plan to organize around the Company’s top product priorities and drive efficiencies throughout the Company. The Company intends to reinvest savings in its most important priorities to drive growth…The roadmap is also a plan to change how we work, and what we need to do that work. Product and Engineering are going to make the most significant structural changes to reflect our plan ahead. We feel strongly that Engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce. And the rest of the organization will be streamlined in parallel.
Made some tough but necessary decisions that enable Twitter to move with greater focus and reinvest in our growth. http://t.co/BWd7EiGAF2
— jack (@jack) October 13, 2015
Official announcement
Twitter officially announces Dorsey is permanent CEO. Costolo leaves the board. Dorsey hires Bain as COO.
Our work forward is to make Twitter easy to understand by anyone in the world, and give more utility to the people who love to use it daily!
— jack (@jack) October 5, 2015