Twitter, one of the biggest social networks in the world, is officially handed to the hands of CEO Jack Dorsey on 5th of October.
Dorsey's appointment exudes optimism in the company to the extent of being dubbed as the "permanent CEO" in several tweets and corporate filings. Being the "permanent CEO," he takes on three challenges: stagnating growth, overpriced stock and caustic content that turns off some big shot users.
Dorsey will be splitting his time between Twitter and Square, the mobile payments company.
Fast Change
However, just a day after his appointment, Twitter already announced a change that took place in the social network's Direct Messaging (DM) system. The company upgraded the look of emojis in the DM section to be bigger and life-sized. They resembles the stickers on Facebook, Snapchat, Viber and Line.
Stagnant Growth
The fast change in the social networking site signals that CEO Dorsey has a lot in mind for better social experience of the users and plans to answer the stagnating growth of the network. A lot of people have abandoned Twitter although it reported 316 million active users last quarter. It is still lagging behind Facebook which is celebrating 1 billion user threshold and just over two years older than Twitter.
Overpriced Stock
However, the CEO has yet to take on more challenges as the state of business of the company is at stake with the excessively overpriced stock that does not match revenues. According to Bloomberg, Twitter currently trades at 9.9 times sales, vs. 6.55 times for Google parent company Alphabet and 17.5 times for Facebook. Of course, Facebook and Google are more profitable than Twitter.
Caustic Content
Anonymity which causes abuse is one of the main problems of Twitter. Facebook has countered this issue with a mandate on the use of real identities with a handful of measures undertaken such as the usage of verification messages over the phone. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo admitted the failure of the company to combat abuse.
While it has only been a day since the new and permanent CEO was put to his throne, a lot is expected of Dorsey.
What do you think are other challenges that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey faces?
