Twitter’s Dick Costolo To Step Down As CEO Next Month

Twitter’s Dick Costolo has announced that he’ll be stepping down from his post as CEO next month. This move isn’t too surprising, as Twitter has suffered stagnant growth, but while it’s speculated that he could have been ousted, Costolo claims that this move has been in the works for a while. “I initiated conversations with some members of the board at the end of last year about CEO succession as I contemplated what was next for me.”

While the company searches for its next CEO, service co-founder Jack Dorsey will take the reign. Whoever heads up the CEO position will have a bit of a challenge ahead of them, as the service’s stagnant growth has become a major concern, as has been other issues surrounding it, such as rampant harassment and bullying. Even more recently, Twitter’s come under fire for failing to thwart piracy, as its Periscope app allows users to easily stream paid content.

There’s no telling where Cosotolo will wind up next, but with his business acumen, he’s sure not going to disappear. In 2004, he co-founded Feedburner, which Google ended up purchasing. After a short stint of working for the big G, Costolo became COO at Twitter in 2009, and then slithered into the CEO position the following year. His stepping down isn’t going to affect his placement in Twitter’s Board of Directors.

In related news, on the same day Costolo made his announcement, Twitter also announced that it is finally relieving the 140 character limit in direct messages – a limitation I never quite understood. Now, the cap is 10,000, which should be sufficient for almost anyone (by comparison, Facebook allows private messages up to 20,000 characters long).