Yesterday afternoon, it was announced that Dick Costolo was stepping down as the CEO of Twitter. The NY Times, and virtually all my media alerts posted about this “event”
Excuse me if I don’t give a shit. A fabulously wealthy individual, who will likely not ever need to clip coupons, will give up his role at the top of Twitter, a mindless time waster (yes, I am aware of the irony of this automatically posting to Twitter) because he didn’t have luck in continuing its meteoric growth, and that the attempts to monetize were not run away successes.
Of course, he will remain a member of the board of directors, so he isn’t exactly frog-marched out the door. Color me surprised.
People have this concept that CEO’s are omniscient and omnipotent beings. But the truth is that the team that surrounds the CEO (often hand picked) is the key to strategy. Of course, looking at all the shuffling of the senior ranks, it isn’t clear that Dick had a good plan.
Of course, one of the articles I read (nb: almost threw up reading) was how the interim successor, Jack Dorsey had a luxurious beard that would attract the confidence of “mommies” (what the fuck is that demographic?)
Don’t get me wrong, I use Twitter, and it has been an effective way to learn and share experiences within the product management community, but if it disappeared, the world wouldn’t end.
(Perhaps I shouldn’t be listening to kick-ass Steppenwolf tunes when I write.)
