‘s chief executive to step down

Jun 12, 2015 (LBO) – Social messaging service, Twitters Chief Executive, Dick Costolo is stepping down, foreign media reports said.

Twitters co-founder Jack Dorsey will take over as interim chief on 1 July and stay until a replacement can be found.

Twitter said that its board had formed a committee to undertake the task of finding a successor and would be looking both inside and outside the company for a new chief.

In a statement, Costolo said he was “tremendously proud of the Twitter team and all that the team has accomplished together during my six years with the company.

”

He added that he had decided to go now because he felt the continued scrutiny if he remained would be a “distraction” and of “no help to the company”.

Costolo had been under pressure from investors unhappy with the firm’s user growth.

Following the announcement the share price of the company rose 7 percent in trading after US markets had closed, media reports said.

Costolo had been Twitter’s CEO for five years and led the company through a successful stock market debut in 2013 and was hired as chief operating officer for Twitter in 2009, three years after its launch.

He has a degree in computer science and led three earlier tech start-ups, including one that he sold to Google.

But even though Twitter had 1.4 billion US dollars in revenue last year, primarily from digital ads, it has not made a profit as a public company.