Jack Dorsey expected to be named permanent Twitter CEO

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) stock is up by as much as 4% today after a report published on Re/Code earlier suggests that interim CEO Jack Dorsey will carry on in this role in the company, on a permanent basis. Dorsey was expected to stay at the mobile payments company he founded in 2009, Square, as the company goes public.

Former chief executive Dick Costolo stepped down as Twitter chief executive in June after a period of slowing user growth at the nine-year-old social media firm.

The latest example of Dorsey’s influence can be seen with rumoured plans to create a product for Twitter which allows long-form posts as opposed to the 140-character limit of traditional tweets.

But reports say the board is in favour of making him permanent chief executive to reverse an apparent downturn in Twitter’s fortunes.

San Francisco-based Twitter has more than 300 million users, but lags far behind Facebook’s 1.5 billion user base and has struggled to widen its audience.

Costolo is now set to leave Twitter’s board, Re/code reported. As recently as April, the stock traded above the $50 handle – the subsequent plunge in share prices helped instigate an eventual move in management. Shortly after becoming interim CEO, Dorsey acknowledged Twitter’s sub-par performance during a review of the company’s disappointing second-quarter results.

Mr Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 and acted as its original chief executive, before being ousted in 2008 by fellow co-founder Evan Williams.

A decision to hire Dorsey also might represent an about-face for Twitter’s board, which headed into its search for a full-time CEO pledging to only consider candidates who could make a “full-time commitment” to the company.

If Dorsey becomes CEO of two companies simultaneously, it would draw parallels to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — a comparison that Dorsey has never discouraged.

Running two companies at once isn’t unprecedented in Silicon Valley.