Social Media Marketing

Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo will step down on July 1. Meanwhile, the confined 140 character limit for direct messages will be extended in coming weeks.

Twitter's chief executive (CEO) Dick Costolo has stepped down and will be replaced on an interim basis by former CEO Jack Dorsey. The change is effective from 1 July.

Costolo has had a tough time of things recently and his departure from the position was not unexpected.

Twitter's financial performance and growth has been under the spotlight of late, but Dorsey said that this is not the thinking behind his stepping down.

"One thing I do want to make clear is that this transition is not the result of anything more than Dick deciding to move on from his role as CEO. There is no connection with our near-term results," he said during a conference call, according to a report on Re/code.

Costolo added in an official Twitter announcement: "I am tremendously proud of the Twitter team and all that the team has accomplished together during my six years with the company.

"We have great leaders who work well together and a clear strategy that informs our objectives and priorities. There is no one better than Jack Dorsey to lead Twitter during this transition.

"I am deeply appreciative of the confidence that the board, the management team and the employees have placed in me over the years, and I look forward to supporting Twitter however I can going forward."

Dorsey said: "The future belongs to Twitter thanks in large part to Dick Costolo's dedication and vision. Dick has put a world class team in place and created a great foundation from which Twitter can continue to change the world and grow.

"We (Read more...) an exciting line-up of products and initiatives coming to market, and I look forward to continuing to execute our strategy while helping facilitate a smooth transition."

As Dorsey suggested, it is not only personnel changes that are happening at Twitter. The social network is also increasing the length of direct messages that users can send.

While now Tweeters are confined to direct messages of 140 characters, like regular Tweets, this will be extended next month to a reported 10,000 character limit.

Developers are offered the chance to try it out first, by implementing the fresh API.

"We encourage you to test and deploy the above changes in advance, but you won't be able to send longer DMs until we launch in July. In the coming weeks though, we will update this post to include directions on how to test these changes, as well as a more specific launch date," said Twitter in a note on its developer page.

"You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter. Nothing! Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today."

This article was originally published on V3.

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