Jack Dorsey is the best (and maybe only) choice for Twitter CEO
This is going to upset some people because he plans to remain CEO of Square, a small-business focused payments processing company, which is going public soon.
Dorsey is the cofounder of both Square and Twitter.
Twitter is a job that needs a full-time CEO, fully committed to fixing its ailments.
Square, which will go through a roadshow, then hit the markets, also needs a full-time CEO to guide it through its initial stages as a public company.
For this reason, the timing isn't great for Dorsey to be Twitter CEO right now.
Despite this, Dorsey is the best, if not only, choice to lead Twitter.
Twitter needs a product-oriented CEO that has the moral authority to tweak the product to make it appeal to the billions of people that don't use Twitter.
Twitter needs an insider who already knows the company and won't need to waste a year, or more, figuring out who does what and who should be retained, or canned.
Dorsey checks both of those boxes.
Will Dorsey be a great CEO that turns Twitter into a fast growing juggernaut? I have no idea! Most ideas I've heard for "fixing" Twitter are either too small and uninspired, or mostly come down to turning it into a watered down version of Facebook.
What makes Twitter special is that it's a real-time, ongoing conversation about the news. This is what also makes it a mess. It's hard to follow, and it has its own language. It's not highly visual, or heavy on video.
Dorsey's job will be to simplify the service so that it appeals to a broad range of users without ruining what makes it special.
Since he invented the product he's in a better position than just about anyone to solve this mystery.