Twitter’s stagnant growth rate has emerged to be a matter of concern lately. Concerns that have been aggravated by the fact that CEO Jack Dorsey has been dividing his attention in running both Twitter and Square. Nevertheless, Jack has confirmed that he will continue to captain both the companies.
In a conference call discussing Twitter’s fourth quarter earnings, Dorsey said;
This focus, and this team, allows me and gives me a lot of confidence I can continue to focus on the meaningful things at both companies and we have the right prioritization in front of us.
The early parts of the last year were a bit confusing in terms of progress, by the end of the year though, Twitter tried to smoothen up its growth through a big round of layoffs. However, issues continue plaguing the company, including less than expected growth, executive departures and trolls and harassers using the platform to do their thing, has proved to be big disappointments.
Twitter’s fourth quarter for example, was pretty disappointing, with the company unable to touch the revenue landmarks set by Wall Street and experienced another year of dropping advertisement revenue. Twitter’s shares fell by another 10 percent, raising questions on Dorsey’s leadership. Since his return as Twitter’s CEO, the company stocks are not having a good time.
The falling stock prices are mounting pressure on Twitter (and Jack Dorsey himself). The company may be in need of an activist investor who can stir up the company to its core and generate some profits. This has actually happened in case of Yahoo and Apple when investors like Carl Icahn helped Apple in increasing their revenues through an agitation.
It is a well observed fact the CEO is the most blamed person in a company’s downfall. Therefore Dorsey needs to speed up the company’s growth this year. The CEO is actually saying that his company will perform better this year, but if it fails to do so the Wall Street may have to step in and force a reorganization.
Dorsey said;
Late last year, we really flattened the org… so I could be closer to the product. Now we’ve spent a year going through and making sure we reset the foundation on what we’re executing and what our priorities are, we have a lot more confidence that we can move a lot faster on bigger things.
