Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal
- Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder, announced Monday he would step down as CEO of the social media site.
- Dorsey chose former CTO and Indian-American engineer Parag Agrawal as his replacement.
- Agrawal, 37, worked on machine learning and AI as the firm’s CTO.
Parag Agrawal is Twitter’s new CEO.
Argawal has been Twitter’s technology chief since 2017, but joined Twitter in 2011 as an engineer specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In an announcement to staff on Monday morning, Argawal said his priorities as CEO include improving working conditions and helping Twitter actualize its “ambitious goals.”
—Parag Agrawal (@paraga) November 29, 2021
Argawal has taken over during a promising period for Twitter, a company that has struggled in the past to grow users and make a profit.
In a July call with investors, Twitter reported increasing yearly revenue 74% to $1.19 billion and monetizable daily active users by 11% to 206 million.
The company also recently released Twitter Blue, a long-awaited $3 subscription service that, among other features, lets users undo tweets.
“I recognize that some of you know me well, some just a little, and some not at all,” Argawal told employees. “Let’s consider ourselves at the beginning — the first step towards our future.”
Here’s more about the incoming head of Twitter:
Agrawal advanced machine learning during his tenure as CTO
As chief of technology, Agrawal oversaw Twitter’s technical strategy and improving development velocity, according to a release.
Agrawal has worked on addressing algorithmic bias during his time as CTO.
—Parag Agrawal (@paraga) June 7, 2018
For instance, Agrawal changed Twitter’s image cropping algorithm to rely less on machine learning after users noticed the images on the site cropped out Black people and centered white faces instead.
“Bias in [machine learning] systems is an industry-wide issue, and one we’re committed to improving on Twitter,” Agrawal wrote in an October 2020 blog post. “We’re aware of our responsibility, and want to work towards making it easier for everyone to understand how our systems work.”
Agrawal also led Twitter’s ambitious Blue Sky initiative, which is funding engineers to develop a decentralized social media landscape. The decentralized platform would move moderation responsibilities from Twitter engineers and managers to the broader user-base on Blue Sky, TechCrunch reported.
Parag received Twitter’s first Distinguished …….