The growth of Twitter has been one of the biggest success stories over the last 10 years, with the company becoming a close second in the social media space to Facebook. Now, co-founder Biz Stone, who left Twitter back in 2011, is making his return to the company after nearly six years.
Don't Call It A Comeback
Stone left Twitter in 2011 to work on Jelly, a new seach engine to challenge Google and Bing. The life cycle of the seach engine saw it go from being that, then evolve into a meme app called Super, then back to the search engine. The project was unable to get any solid traction, and ended up being sold to Pinterest. Stone ended up working for the company part-time before deciding to make his official return to Twitter.
"I worked at Twitter for about six years. In that time, the service grew from zero people to hundreds of millions of people. Jack was the original CEO and when he returned I was very happy," Stone wrote on Medium. "My top focus will be to guide the company culture, that energy, that feeling."
Stone said that he also had plans to take another job offer after leaving his part-time position at Pinterest.
What's The Deal?
Stone's return is very timely, for two reasons. First, Twitter is building a new business arm focusing on live video streaming, which more social media sites and services have been adding. This is proving to be a very sought-after feature for services and has proven to be successful on Facebook and Instagram already, so Twitter is now caught in a position of playing catch-up. Granted, it already has a built-in video program, much like Facebook did before it started its streaming service, and has proven it's more than capable of catching up to its competitors in the past.
The other reason is that this decision reunites Stone with his fellow founder, Jack Dorsey. These were two of the four individuals who brought the world Twitter, and were there for a good period of growth for the company. Now, with the company expanding its business into live video and rising stocks, having two of the founders back could only be beneficial for Twitter.
It doesn't hurt that Stone isn't taking anyone else's position either, focusing his efforts on the company culture and not using his status as founder to leverage the situation. It goes to show that Twitter continues to be in good hands.
