SAN FRANCISCO: In the fast-moving world of Silicon Valley, Twitter’s search for a new chief executive is moving at a snail’s pace, raising concerns about deeper woes at the social media platform.

The San Francisco messaging platform has been searching for a new leader since Dick Costolo announced on June 12 he was stepping down, with co-founder Jack Dorsey holding the job on an interim basis since July 1.

The unusually long search has some investors and analysts worried over the future of Twitter.

“It’s very disconcerting for the company to not know who’s going to be the CEO,” said Lou Kerner, partner at the venture capital firm FlightVC and founder of the Social Internet Fund.

“It’s hard to retain and attract great talent if they don’t know who they’re going to be working for. Every day that ticks by, it’s a big loss for the company.”

One Twitter stakeholder, Silicon Valley venture investor Chris Sacca, has on two occasions launched “tweetstorms” to voice support for making Dorsey the permanent CEO.

“Enough is enough. The board needs to act. They are running a ‘process’ yet there is only one person fit to run this company: @jack,” Sacca tweeted on Sept 11.

“He has the full support of the key players at Twitter and its largest investors.”

While Dorsey would appear to be a natural choice, it is unclear if he is willing to step down from his other start-up, Square, or manage to lead both companies simultaneously as the online payments firm readies its initial public offering (IPO).

A long list of potential CEO candidates has surfaced in media reports: Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, AOL chief Tim Armstrong, Intel president Renee James and several Google executives.

Inside the company, one frequently mentioned name is Adam Bain, who is overseeing Twitter’s effort at monetisation including advertising. Another is its finance chief Anthony Noto, whose Goldman Sachs background could reassure Wall Street.

Rob Enderle, a consultant and analyst at Enderle Group, said Twitter’s needs are highly specialised, making the search complicated. — AFP

This article first appeared in digitaledge Daily, on September 21, 2015.