"I decided to quit Twitter because I think the company is ready to cut the cord with its founders," said Jack Dorsey, in a statement, which marks the end of an era.

To mark the break, the native of St. Louis (Missouri) also plans to leave the board of directors in 2022 and will not seek a new mandate at the general assembly of the group.

With his recognizable allure, shaved head and long beard, and his atypical style, Jack Dorsey has, for years, been the sole embodiment of Twitter.

He had made a first stint as general manager of Twitter between 2007 and 2008, finally ousted by the board of directors, dissatisfied with his management.

Since his return to the helm of the company at the Blue Bird in October 2015, the relaxed entrepreneur has been regularly criticized for not having let go of the reins of his other company, the specialist in mobile payments Square, to be devote only to Twitter.

While Jack Dorsey fades, he leaves Twitter with a portfolio of 211 million daily users said to be "monetizable", that is to say who are exposed to advertisements on the platform.

With Jack Dorsey at the helm, Twitter published its first quarter profit, for the last three months of 2017, then two full years in the green, before plunging back into the red in 2020.

The 40-year-old has endeavored to monetize the traffic of the platform, a weak point of the company until then, while it is a major relay of opinion, with a unique place in the media landscape.

To do this, the group has improved its moderation tools to make the network more presentable and easier to use for advertisers but also users.

He deleted the accounts of personalities accused of hate speech or of relaying conspiracy theories or false claims.

- Dorsey vs Trump -

The culmination of this clean-up campaign is the permanent suspension of the account of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, in January 2021.

The decision has further reinforced, in the eyes of many conservatives, the image of a network in the service of progressives and the left and ready to muzzle freedom of expression.

"People tend to associate Jack Dorsey with censorship on Twitter, but I think he has done what he could in recent years to keep the platform relatively open," Mike commented on Twitter. Solana, head of the private equity firm Founders Fund.

"Without him things will get worse, not better."

To improve its profitability, Twitter has also launched a series of initiatives, including the possibility of paid subscriptions to certain highly followed accounts.

In June, the network also launched a paid version of Twitter in Canada and Australia with additional features for users who subscribe to it.

In recent quarters, Jack Dorsey had insisted on the need to personalize, with the help of artificial intelligence, the use made by each subscriber of the service, in particular by creating new threads specific to specific subjects.

"We are on the way to leave 2021 by being a more focused company, with clearer priorities," said Jack Dorsey at the last results presentation conference at the end of October.

With Twitter for more than ten years, Parag Agrawal is a specialist in computer engineering, who has played a major role in accelerating artificial intelligence within the group.

After a brief suspension pending the announcement, the market was reacting favorably to the unconfirmed information, with Twitter headline gaining 2.90% around 4.30 p.m. GMT on Wall Street.

Become billionaire in 2013 with the IPO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey is today at the head of a fortune estimated at 11.8 billion dollars by the site of the magazine Forbes.

© 2021 AFP