Parag Agrawal, new CEO of Twitter, who’ll be taking over for Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the longest-serving chief executive in the company’s 15-plus-year history. Here’s the tweet:
Parag Agrawal isn’t the well-known of names either inside or outside of Twitter. Though, he’s been with the company for over a decade, working his way up from an engineer to become its top executive. Parag first started at Twitter back in October 2011 and became the first recipient of the company’s “Distinguished Engineer” title. Later, he was appointed chief technology officer (CTO) in October 2017. Agrawal hasn’t spent much time in the public eye.
There are a few hints from Parag’s history as CTO that indicate where Twitter might go next under his leadership. Parag Agrawal is the fourth person to take the lead at Twitter, after Dorsey (who led the company from 2006 to 2008, and again from 2015 until now), Evan Williams (who co-founded Twitter alongside Jack and served as CEO from 2008 to 2010), and Dick Costolo ( from 2010 through 2015).
As CTO, one of Agrawal’s biggest projects has been his overseeing of the company’s decentralized Bluesky platform, which was first announced in December 2019. Also, Parag Agarwal was a part of the effort last year to address Twitter’s problematic racial cropping issues with photo previews, in addition to handling the public explanation for the company’s 2018 password bug.