SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 30 (BUS): Newly named Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has emerged behind the scenes to take on one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious political jobs.
But it seems his previous lack of name recognition combined with a solid technical background is what some of the big corporate backers were looking for to lead Twitter out of its current quagmire.
A 37-year-old immigrant from India, Agrawal comes from outside the ranks of famous CEOs, including the man who would replace him, Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Tesla. The founders and leaders of brand-name companies have often appeared in the news — and on Twitter — for feats that go beyond the day-to-day running of their companies.
Having served as Twitter’s chief technology officer for the past four years, Agrawal’s appointment was seen by Wall Street as a pick for someone who would focus on bringing Twitter into what is widely seen as the next internet era – the metaverse.
Agrawal is a “safe” choice that investors should view positively,” CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino wrote, noting that Elliott Management Corp., a Twitter equity firm, had pressured Dorsey to step down, the AP reports.
Elliott issued a statement Monday saying that Agrawal and new chairman Brett Taylor are the “appropriate leaders for Twitter at this pivotal moment for the company.” Taylor is President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce for Business Software.
Agrawal, whose name is pronounced PUH-rag AH-gur-wahl, joins a growing cadre of American-Indian CEOs of major tech companies, including Google’s Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Arvind Krishna’s IBM Corporation.
He joined San Francisco-based Twitter in 2011, when he had just 1,000 employees, and has been the chief technical director since 2017. At the end of last year, the company had a workforce of 5,500.
Agrawal has previously worked at Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T in research positions. At Twitter, he’s worked on machine learning, revenue, consumer engineering, and audience growth assistance. He studied at Stanford and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
While Twitter has prominent users like politicians and celebrities and is a favorite of journalists, its user base lags far behind old competitors like Facebook and YouTube and newer users like TikTok. It has just over 200 million daily active users, which is a common industry metric.
As CEO, Agrawal has to go beyond the technical details and deal with the social and political issues plaguing Twitter and social media. These include misinformation, abuse and effects on mental health.
Agrawal got a quick introduction to life as a CEO of a high-profile company that is one of the central platforms for online political discourse. Conservatives soon discovered a tweet he sent in 2010 that read, “If they don’t differentiate between Muslims and extremists, why do I differentiate between whites and racists.”
As some Twitter users have pointed out, the 11-year-old’s tweet was quoting a clip in “The Daily Show,” which was referring to the expulsion of Juan Williams, who made a comment about his concern about Muslims on a plane.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a message for comment on the tweet.