Twitter says co-founder Jack Dorsey to stay CEO

Twitter named Jack Dorsey as its permanent CEO but said it would look elsewhere for a chairman, seeking to allay concerns about its co-founder’s dual role as head of the mobile payments company Square.

Dorsey’s biggest challenge at Twitter will be finding a way to make the site easier to navigate and broaden its appeal beyond media junkies, athletes, celebrities and politicians.

Dorsey will continue to serve as a member of the board, but will no longer act as chairman.

“Twitter has its work cut out for it for the remainder of this year and beyond”, said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. He made the announcement via Twitter of course. Dorsey tweeted early Monday.

Dorsey was pushed out of the chief chair his first time around.

Investors and analysts have lauded faster product rollouts since Dorsey took the helm in July, including a widely available “buy now” button that allows users to make purchases directly through Twitter. Dorsey won’t get a penny for his new gig. Twitter will fill that post with someone from outside the company.

“If it launches enough new features, a few will surely find a wider audience”, Elliott said of Twitter.

“We believe Dorsey has the requisite vision and organizational clout to address a few of Twitter’s major challenges”, Sebastian wrote in a research note. His account, @jack, now has more than three million followers.

There are now no plans to provide Dorsey with “direct compensation” for his role as chief, Twitter said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

October 2008. Since February 2009, Dorsey has served as co-founder and chief executive officer of Square. Dorsey will remain on Twitter’s board.

The platform let people fire off one-to-many text messages limited to no more than 140 characters. Dorsey will also continue to serve as chief executive officer of Square, the payments and financial services company he co-founded in 2009. Bain, 42, has overseen Twitter’s effort at monetization, including advertising.

In its hiring of Dorsey, Twitter’s board recanted on a pledge issued in late June when it vowed to pick a CEO who would be able to make a “full-time commitment” to the company. He had guided the San Francisco-based firm through its IPO in November of 2013.

Increasing the length of tweets, though, might alienate a few of Twitter’s most loyal and active users, who have embraced the 140-character limit as an exercise in eloquence.