Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey said Tuesday that he cut back
his duties at the microblogging service months ago after reaching goals set
when he returned to the company, a response to a New York Times report that
said the change was made because employees did not like working with Dorsey.
Dorsey invented Twitter in 2006 and led the company as CEO until 2008,
when he left to found payments startup Square, where he still serves as CEO.
He returned in 2011 to focus on the company's branding and design, famously
saying he was working 8 hours a day at both San Francisco companies.
At the beginning of 2012, after less than a year back at
Twitter, Dorsey returned control of the employees who directly reported
to him back to CEO Dick Costolo, according to a Tumblr post from Dorsey on
Tuesday.
Dorsey wrote that he and the company planned for his role to be
short-term all along.
"Our shared goal was to get those organizations back under (Costolo) as
soon as possible, simply because it was the right thing to do for the
company," Dorsey wrote, later adding, "We haven't talked about this publicly
because it's not what people using Twitter every day care about."
His account is different from a weekend New York Times profile of
Costolo, which said Dorsey's "role has since been reduced after employees
complained that he was difficult to work with and repeatedly
changed his mind about product directions."
Dorsey mentioned the Times piece in his post, calling it a "great
profile" of Costolo but adding he wanted "to clarify a few points."
Dorsey said that he has returned the majority of his time to Square,
which has made big news recently in announcing a new round of funding and a
partnership with Starbucks that will put the payments service in the
ubiquitous coffee shop chain's locations. He spends Tuesday afternoons at
Twitter, a practice he had even before returning to the company last year,
Dorsey wrote.
