SAN FRANCISCO, California -- After a series of twists and turns over the past few weeks at Twitter, its new CEO Jack Dorsey has made it clear that he would face up to challenges and get the microblogging service operator back on the right track.
Taking the stage at the San Francisco-based firm’s second Flight developer conference on Thursday, CEO Jack Dorsey said the company would spare no effort to regain its reputation as the guardian of free speech.
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey delivers a keynote speech at the firm’s annual Flight developer conference held at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, Wednesday. (Twitter) |
“Twitter stands for freedom of expression, we will not rest until that is recognized as a global, fundamental human right,” said Jack Dorsey in his keynote speech at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, vowing that it would help people “speak truth to power.”
The appearance was his first in this capacity since he returned two weeks ago as CEO at Twitter after being booted from the company seven years ago.
The remarks of the new Twitter CEO were powerful enough for many present at the event to glean the future direction of the social networking service launched in 2006, and seemed to be inspiring enough for those who want to change the world as they drew loud applause.
The Twitter service has been widely utilized by people around the world to spread news and information nearly in real time, as in the democratic movements of the Middle East -- dubbed the Arab Spring -- and when a police shooting led to the death of a teenager in the U.S. city of Ferguson, Missouri.
However, according to analysts it has started running out of steam and failed to catch up with the latest social media trends, lagging behind other services such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. Twitter’s reputation has also been tainted as it has been accused of digital pollution including indecent content and advertisements.
Dorsey’s commitment to make Twitter the most revolutionary communications tool displayed on the day will likely dispel some concerns over its identity and future growth to some extent.
As parts of his efforts to reinvigorate Twitter, he also promised to make amends with developers, admitting that the ties between the company and developers went awry at one point.
“We want to come to you today and first and foremost apologize for our confusion,” Dorsey said onstage. “We want to reset our relationship and we want to make sure that we are learning, that we are listening, and that we are rebooting.”
Twitter received flak from critics and users when it cut off API access to a group of websites dedicated to tracking politicians’ tweets, including Politwoops, earlier this year.
Delivering presentations at the Wednesday event, his top lieutenants unveiled a package of new updates, including functions to incorporate Twitter feeds and crash tracking into applications, and Twitter’s developer platform Fabric, which was announced last year. The free all-in-one app developing tool will be compatible with services provided by Twitter’s eight new partners that include Stripe’s mobile payment services as well as Amazon’s remote computing services.
Since taking the reins of the company, Dorsey has been making efforts to revamp the firm’s businesses, reinforcing its services including short-form video-sharing app Vine and live-streaming app Periscope. He also sped up restructuring efforts by laying off 8 percent of employees, or 336 people of the firm, mostly engineers, in recent days.
The story full of drama inside Twitter may be far from over. Many of the participants, mostly developers, however, cast sanguine outlooks on its future.
“Because he is the creator of Twitter, he really understands what its role in the world is and how it can really help people,” head of consumer products Jeff Siebert said in a meeting with reporters.
By Kim Young-won, Korea Herald correspondent (
wone0102@heraldcorp.com)
