Things were off to a poor start today for Dick Costolo, Twitter’s former COO. After co-founder Evan Williams announced that he would be vacating the post and promoting Costolo, users who took to Twitter to learn more about @dickc were greeted with an unresponsive fail whale. The site went down for a second time a few minutes before 5 p.m. Eastern. But perhaps the more pressing oversight was the fact that Costolo failed to tweet about the news. How are you going to convince advertisers and future stockholders that your company is the go-to source for real-time updates if your own feed is yesterday’s news? Worse, Costolo’s employees were already throwing out zingers into the news feed. Twitter’s communications guy, Sean Garrett, wrote, “OH: The site has had 100% downtime since I’ve been CEO.” Co-founder Biz Stone quipped, “Our #newtwitter was designed to be easier, faster, and richer but our #newtwitterceo is faster, older, and balder!” Costolo was much more fleet-footed when he started with the company last year, tweeting “First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: Undermine CEO, consolidate power.”
Costolo is Twitter’s third CEO. Before Williams, co-founder Jack Dorsey held the top spot until being pushed out. Costolo, who sold his company Feedburner to Google, told MediaMemo that he’s not interested in selling, and that the company wants to stay independent for “a long time.” But he didn’t rule out an IPO.
Of All The Times For Twitter To Go Down … [TechCrunch]
Twitter Replaces CEO Ev Williams With Deputy Dick Costolo [MediaMemo]
