Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down from the position of CEO. Hence, Parag Agrawal became the new CEO of Twitter on November 29. Agrawal joins the ranks of global tech CEOs from India. It includes Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai, IBM’s Arvind Krishna, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, and VMWare’s Raghuram.
Since October 2017, Agrawal, who joined the company in 2011, has served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He was in charge of the company’s technological strategy. Agarwal attempts to improve development velocity while advancing the status of machine learning across the organization in this role.
Dorsey posted a letter on Twitter. He says, “He (Agrawal) has been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs. Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around.
”Agrawal in response said, “Deep gratitude for @jack and our entire team, and so much excitement for the future. Here’s the note I sent to the company. Thank you all for your trust and support.”
Who is Parag Agarwal?
He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and is a Computer Science and Engineering graduate of IIT-Bombay.
Agrawal worked on large-scale data management research with collaborators at Microsoft Research, Yahoo! Research, and AT&T Labs before joining Twitter in 2011.
Dorsey also put Agrawal in charge of Project Bluesky. It is the company’s decentralized social networking activities; until it selected a leader in December 2019. Bluesky’s new head, Jay Graber, had been named in August 2021.
Leading the company’s efforts to employ artificial intelligence to boost the relevance of tweets in users’ timelines has been one of his major contributions.
What does this signify for India and Twitter?
Given Agrawal’s background in technology, there’s a chance that this will lead to further product innovation. Having an Indian-origin CEO, according to Kal Patel, a former partner at Vantage Point Venture Partners, could have an impact on the company’s connection with the Indian government, he stated during a Twitter Spaces session. It will also be intriguing to watch what modifications the new CEO might make to the platform’s moderation.