{"id":27762,"date":"2021-12-01T05:51:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T05:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=27762"},"modified":"2021-12-04T05:05:44","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T05:05:44","slug":"jack-dorseys-decision-to-quit-twitter-is-not-a-vote-of-confidence-in-future-of-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/jack-dorseys-decision-to-quit-twitter-is-not-a-vote-of-confidence-in-future-of-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Dorsey\u2019s decision to quit Twitter is not a vote of confidence in future of social media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Theo Tzanidis<\/a>, University of the West of Scotland<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Jack Dorsey made the sudden public announcement<\/a> that he had quit as CEO of Twitter, it was only ever going to have happened in one place \u2013 Twitter itself. It reminded me very much of Elon Musk\u2019s entertaining tweet adventures<\/a>, as Dorsey tossed his resignation letter<\/a> onto the social media platform that he co-founded. You could imagine him sitting back to soak up the theatre of reaction and speculation that unfolded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t Dorsey\u2019s first resignation letter to Twitter \u2013 he was forced out<\/a> of the CEO chair in 2008 only to return as executive chairman three years later \u2013 and no one can say for sure if it will be the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the email<\/a> sent to Twitter staff in which he announced his latest resignation, he thinks the firm should \u201cstand on its own, free of its founder\u2019s influence or direction\u201d. In the ensuing tweet storm after he then put the news on Twitter, he insisted it had been his decision. So what does it all add up to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media\u2019s midlife crisis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dorsey\u2019s move was not entirely unexpected. For more than a year, he has been under intense pressure<\/a> from activist investors to accelerate Twitter\u2019s development and improve its financial performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wall Street investors have criticised Dorsey\u2019s outside interests, which include running payments giant Square, which he founded during his last Twitter exile, as well as<\/a> pursuing futuristic projects<\/a> centred around decentralising<\/a> (meaning removing traditional corporate control from) the internet and finance. Notably, Twitter\u2019s share price shot up with the announcement, only to be pulled down with the rest of the market as it worries about the COVID omicron variant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sense a similarity here between Dorsey and other digital moguls such as Jeff Bezos and, once again, Musk. Like Dorsey, Bezos and Musk both run two companies in Amazon\/Blue Origin and Tesla\/SpaceX respectively, as well as seeking different forms of excitement and adventure, with Bezos\u2019 efforts<\/a> to reach space orbit and Musk sending a Tesla Roadster<\/a> sports car into space. It all seems to signify mega-tech founders becoming dissatisfied with the monotonous management of their most famous companies and looking for something more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of Twitter, there is also the social-media dimension. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are increasingly burdened by political controversy and complex issues such as disinformation, privacy breaches and hate speech. Twitter, for example,<\/a> became the megaphone of choice for Donald Trump before later banning him, and is having to wrestle with hate speech<\/a> as a global issue. It is sometimes said that these companies are facing a social media midlife crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cartoon<\/a>
Lest we forget. Anton Khodakovskiy<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are no simple solutions, so it makes sense that someone like Dorsey might get more thrilled by creating novel things than mending existing ones. It might make sense to hand over control of your empire to others and set off in quest of new horizons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorsey\u2019s reference to \u201cfounder ego\u201d in his farewell message to Twitter and staff can only be interpreted as a poke at Mark Zuckerberg, who has shown no signs of relinquishing control over Facebook\/Meta. On the contrary, he is looking to further develop the company\u2019s influence by upgrading its operations to a more a virtual reality version<\/a> of the internet known as the metaverse or 3Dweb<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Facebook made its historic announcement in October that it was rebranding as Meta, Dorsey\u2019s tweets<\/a> hinted at his disapproval of Zuckerberg\u2019s decision to stay on. Despite Dorsey insisting this week that he loves Twitter, I suspect he sees difficult times ahead for social media companies and even the concept of these \u201ctraditional\u201d platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my view, the days are gone when young developers wanted to work for Google, Facebook or Twitter. They now seem more interested in \u201cflipping\u201d NFTs (buying and selling these digital collectibles for a quick profit) and writing applications for the (non-Meta) metaverse. Meanwhile, regulators are increasing the heat<\/a> on Silicon Valley\u2019s old guard over their ethical standards around content and use of data. And if the metaverse is the future, it raises questions about exactly how a microblogging platform with a narrow user-base fits into this new 3D era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What next for Jack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While Dorsey has handed control of Twitter to 37-year-old chief technology officer Parag Agrawal<\/a>, he will have more time to focus on Square. The payments firm is valued at nearly US$100 billion (\u00a375 billion) \u2013 more than double Twitter \u2013 and one of its main focuses has been to move cryptocurrencies into the mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Square has<\/a> bitcoin on its balance sheet and is planning to launch a decentralised crypto exchange called tbDEX, as well as potentially moving into bitcoin mining (the creation of new bitcoin). Dorsey is also an angel investor in numerous other projects, including music streaming app<\/a> Tidal, in which rapper Jay Z is a co-investor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many respects, the cryptocurrency landscape has inherited the loose, freewheeling attitude that characterised the early days of social media platforms. Decentralised start-ups like finance platform Compound<\/a>, crypto exchange Uniswap<\/a> and currency maker MakerDao<\/a> are making big profits and becoming more and more popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are dominated by eccentric geniuses such as Uniswap creator Hayden Adams<\/a> and MakerDao\u2019s Rune Christensen<\/a>, who have unusual backgrounds and voracious appetites for risk. It will look like an appealing landing site for burned-out tech professionals trying to rekindle their optimism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I always say to my students, we are living in an age of acceleration<\/a>, where technology is developing at a rate faster than what any individual can keep up with. To survive this, we need a new way of thinking about technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silicon Valley CEOs like Jack Dorsey were the catalysts for this era, and now they too have to adapt and reinvent the very world they created. Dorsey has the advantage that he has had one foot in this new camp for some time. His departure does not give me a great deal of confidence in traditional social media, but it could give added impetus to crypto and tech start-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theo Tzanidis<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, University of the West of Scotland<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theo Tzanidis, University of the West of Scotland When Jack Dorsey made the sudden public announcement that he had quit as CEO of Twitter, it was only ever going to have happened in one place \u2013 Twitter itself. It reminded me very much of Elon Musk\u2019s entertaining tweet adventures, as Dorsey tossed his resignation letter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,277],"tags":[433,435,483,1676,10161,10938,525,702,486],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27762"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27783,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762\/revisions\/27783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}