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Twitter has a brand new CEO: Parag Agrawal, who’ll be taking up for Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the longest-serving chief government within the firm’s 15-plus-year historical past.
Agrawal isn’t probably the most well-known of names both inside or outdoors of Twitter. He’s been with the corporate for over a decade, although, working his means up from an engineer to turn out to be its high government (and an in depth good friend of Dorsey’s). Agrawal first began at Twitter again in October 2011 with a deal with advert merchandise, and he grew to become the primary recipient of the corporate’s “Distinguished Engineer” title. He was later appointed chief expertise officer in October 2017, throughout which era he’s jumped in to deal with high-profile issues (like a large-scale password safety concern) and tackle among the firm’s bolder initiatives (like decentralization). However regardless of that lengthy tenure, Agrawal, who’s 37, hasn’t spent a lot time within the public eye — one thing that may instantly change along with his new function.
That mentioned, there are just a few cues from Agrawal’s historical past as CTO that would point out the place Twitter may go subsequent underneath his management. Agrawal is the fourth individual to take the reins at Twitter, after Dorsey (who led the corporate from 2006 to 2008, and once more from 2015 till now), Evan Williams (who co-founded Twitter alongside Dorsey and served as CEO from 2008 to 2010), and Dick Costolo (Twitter’s former COO, who served as CEO from 2010 by means of 2015).
In his time as CTO, one in every of Agrawal’s largest initiatives has been his overseeing of the corporate’s decentralized Bluesky platform, which was first introduced in December 2019. Supposed as an “open and decentralized customary for social media” that Twitter itself might ultimately transition to utilizing, Bluesky has been one of many extra dramatic concepts for Twitter’s future and a pet venture of Dorsey’s.
Bluesky has additionally been selecting up steam prior to now few months after an extended interval of radio silence: the group revealed its evaluate of current decentralized social media methods at first of the yr and at last put cryptocurrency developer Jay Graber accountable for Bluesky in August after months of looking for a product lead. Presumably, Bluesky’s improvement — and its potential impression in changing the underpinnings of Twitter’s platform — is one thing that may proceed to be a significant venture for Agrawal as CEO.
Moreover, the newly based Twitter Crypto workforce led by Tess Rinearson that was introduced earlier in November additionally reported on to Agrawal (though it’s not clear if that may proceed to be the case following his promotion). That workforce can be set to work intently with Bluesky, which — mixed with Agrawal’s curiosity in decentralized Web3 platforms — speaks to a doable course for Twitter’s future.
That have with Bluesky might gel properly with one other of Agrawal’s largest initiatives as Twitter’s chief expertise officer: the years-long effort to attempt to transfer a few of Twitter’s merchandise off its personal servers to extra sturdy cloud companies from firms like Amazon and Google.
Agrawal spearheaded the trouble to advance Twitter’s inner expertise again in 2018 in an effort to attempt to assist velocity up the tempo of function improvement and deployment, as famous in an interview with The Info earlier this yr. “After we hear folks say that Twitter is sluggish at delivery, that hurts, and that’s one thing we use as motivation,” Agrawal mentioned.
That’s led to modifications like Twitter’s partnership with Google Cloud for processing information in Could 2018 and the continuing effort to slowly change over the Twitter timeline function itself to Amazon Net Companies (which is anticipated to be full in 2023). “I do suppose individuals are beginning to acknowledge now externally that we’re going quicker. And it feels good as a result of it’s like a bunch of labor from the previous beginning to repay,” Agrawal famous within the interview. “However we’re nowhere near carried out. I feel we have now a variety of alternative to go even quicker and [in] much more noticeable methods within the coming years.”
Different Agrawal initiatives have been extra reactionary fixes to current Twitter issues, albeit vital ones: in his time as CTO, Agrawal was part of the trouble final yr to deal with Twitter’s problematic racial cropping points with photograph previews, along with dealing with the general public rationalization for the corporate’s 2018 password bug.
Agrawal has additionally hinted at how he’ll handle one in every of Twitter’s largest challenges: moderation. In a 2020 interview with MIT Expertise Evaluate, Agrawal mentioned that Twitter’s function is to construct a wholesome place for conversing on-line, suggesting that would come on the expense of permitting folks to say no matter they need. “Our function is to not be sure by the First Modification, however our function is to serve a wholesome public dialog,” he mentioned.
That doesn’t imply moderating all misinformation, although. Agrawal views Twitter’s objective as avoiding the “particular hurt that deceptive data could cause” fairly than “making an attempt to be an arbiter of what’s true or false on the web.” That’s as a result of, as Agrawal places it, “defining misinformation is admittedly, actually exhausting.”
That stance might proceed to result in points with Republican politicians, lots of whom are already against Twitter’s moderation insurance policies and ban of former President Donald Trump. The Home Judiciary GOP Twitter account already referred to Twitter’s new CEO as “a lot worse” than Dorsey after latching onto an out-of-context tweet from Agrawal from 2010 (earlier than he was employed at Twitter) quoting a comedic section from The Each day Present with Jon Stewart’s Aasif Mandvi about stereotypes. Repeated experiences have proven that social media platforms like Twitter don’t have any empirical proof of bias towards conservative content material, and a latest examine from Twitter itself discovered that the platform’s algorithms really favored right-wing views.
It’s one in every of many hurdles Agrawal must overcome. Whereas he inherits an organization that has been rising its day by day consumer figures and rolling out merchandise at a speedier-than-ever clip, Twitter nonetheless faces ongoing points with consumer progress at residence, advert merchandise stymied by latest privateness modifications, and faster-growing social networks like Snapchat. Agrawal will not be probably the most publicly recognizable candidate for operating Twitter, however his years of expertise with the corporate, deep expertise with Twitter’s product, and previous work in serving to modernize Twitter’s tech stack makes him an fascinating alternative for CEO, particularly as decentralized blockchain expertise turns into extra distinguished.
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