New Twitter CEO steps from behind the scenes to high profile

Newly named Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has emerged from down the scenes to instrumentality implicit 1 of Silicon Valley's highest-profile and politically volatile jobs.

But his anterior deficiency of sanction designation coupled with a coagulated method inheritance appears to beryllium what immoderate large institution backers were looking for to pb Twitter retired of its existent morass.

A 37-year-old migrant from India, Agrawal comes from extracurricular the ranks of personage CEOs, which see the antheral he's replacing, Jack Dorsey, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla. Those brand-name institution founders and leaders person often been successful the news—and connected Twitter—for exploits beyond the day-to-day moving of their companies.

Having served arsenic Twitter's chief exertion officer for the past 4 years, Agrawal's assignment was seen by Wall Street arsenic a prime of idiosyncratic who volition absorption connected ushering Twitter into what's wide seen arsenic the internet's adjacent era—the metaverse.

Agrawal is simply a "'safe' prime who should beryllium looked upon arsenic favorably by investors," wrote CFRA Research expert Angelo Zino, who noted that Twitter shareholder Elliott Management Corp. had pressured Dorsey to measurement down.

Elliott released a connection Monday saying Agrawal and caller committee president Bret Taylor were the "right leaders for Twitter astatine this pivotal infinitesimal for the company." Taylor is president and main operating serviceman of the concern bundle institution Salesforce.

Agrawal, whose sanction is pronounced (PUH-rag AH-gur-wahl), joins a increasing cadre of Indian-American CEOs of ample tech companies, including Sundar Pichai of Google genitor Alphabet, Microsoft's Satya Nadella and IBM's Arvind Krishna.

He joined San Francisco-based Twitter successful 2011, erstwhile it had conscionable 1,000 employees, and has been its chief method officer since 2017. At the extremity of past year, the institution had a workforce of 5,500.

Agrawal antecedently worked astatine Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T successful probe roles. At Twitter, he's worked connected instrumentality learning, gross and user engineering and helping with assemblage growth. He studied astatine Stanford and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

While Twitter has high-profile users similar politicians and celebrities and is simply a favourite of journalists, its idiosyncratic basal lags acold down aged rivals similar Facebook and YouTube and newer ones similar TikTok. It has conscionable implicit 200 cardinal regular progressive users, a communal manufacture metric.

As CEO, Agrawal person to measurement beyond the method details and woody with the societal and governmental issues Twitter and societal media are struggling with. Those see misinformation, maltreatment and effects connected intelligence health.

Agrawal got a accelerated instauration to beingness arsenic CEO of a high-profile company that's 1 of the cardinal platforms for governmental code online. Conservatives rapidly unearthed a tweet helium sent successful 2010 that work "If they are not gonna marque a favoritism betwixt muslims and extremists, past wherefore should I separate betwixt achromatic radical and racists."

As immoderate Twitter users pointed out, the 11-year-old tweet was quoting a conception connected "The Daily Show," which was referencing the firing of Juan Williams, who made a remark astir being tense astir Muslims connected an airplane.

Twitter did not instantly respond to a connection for remark connected the tweet.

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