Ev Williams, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, announced that he would be stepping down from the board at the company. Williams did not specify why he is making the change other than focusing “on some other things.”
Williams took the reins as CEO from fellow Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey between 2008 and 2010. Then Dick Costolo took over Williams as CEO of Twitter in 2010 until 2015 when Dorsey returned.
Even though Williams left Twitter in 2011, he kept a seat on the board of directors. As of December 2018, Williams owned about 14.6 million shares in Twitter — which is down from 29 million shares last April.
“It’s been an incredible 13 years, and I’m proud of what Twitter has accomplished during my time with the company,” said Williams in a statement via CNBC. “I will continue rooting for the team as I focus my time on other projects.”
Currently, Williams also works as the CEO of the blogging platform known as Medium — which has been growing at a rapid pace. Medium raised a total of about $132 million as of November 2018 and the company is not profitable yet.
Medium is hitting 90 million unique users every month and the company is seeing about 20,000 blog posts being published every day. Medium pays thousands of writers every month and the company licenses content from major publishers as well. One of the most notable blog posts published on Medium was by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos — who used the platform for accusing the National Enquirer publication of extortion.
Here are tweets that Williams and Dorsey wrote about the changes:
I'm going to ride off into the sunset (or…down Market Street), so I can focus on some other things. I will always be rooting for the team (and, if someone lets me in, come by for lunch).
— Ev Williams (@ev) February 22, 2019
I appreciate you, Ev! You’re the reason I joined Odeo in the first place. I’ve learned so much from you since that crazy interview you and @Noah put me through. We’re going to miss your voice in our board conversations. ❤️ https://t.co/27pxrieh9S
— jack (@jack) February 22, 2019
