iWorld
Jack Dorsey steps down, Parag Agarwal named as Twitter CEO
Mumbai: Microblogging site Twitter has named Parag Agarwal as the new chief executive officer of the company effective immediately. The decision was announced by the outgoing CEO Jack Dorsey who stepped down from his position on Monday.
Agarwal, an alumnus of IIT-Bombay and a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University had joined the US company in 2011 as an Ads engineer. He was elevated as the chief technology officer in March 2018. As the CTO, he led technical strategy for the company and oversaw machine learning and AI across its product and infrastructure teams.
Dorsey would continue to serve on the company’s board until the expiry of his term, which is May, next year. In an email to his employees, which he also shared on Twitter, Dorsey shared that he had worked hard to ensure that the company can break away from its founding and founders. “There’s a lot of talk about the company being founder-led. Ultimately I believe that it’s severely limiting, and a single point of failure,” he wrote, adding that it was the right time for him to leave, and there were three reasons which made him believe so.
One of the reasons he enlisted was Agarwal, who has been behind every critical decision that helped turn the company around, and deeply understands the company and its needs. “My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep,” he wrote.
not sure anyone has heard but,
I resigned from Twitter pic.twitter.com/G5tUkSSxkl
— jack (@jack) November 29, 2021
Dorsey along with Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Noah Glass had founded the company in 2006. Dorsey left the company in 2008 to set up his digital payments app, Square, and made a comeback in 2015 and has remained the CEO since.
“The world is watching us right now, even more than they have before. Lots of people are going to have lots of different views and opinions about today’s news. It is because they care about Twitter and it’s our future, and it’s a signal that the work we do here matters. Lets’ show the world Twitter’s potential,” wrote Agarwal.
Deep gratitude for @jack and our entire team, and so much excitement for the future. Here’s the note I sent to the company. Thank you all for your trust and support https://t.co/eNatG1dqH6 pic.twitter.com/liJmTbpYs1
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) November 29, 2021
iWorld
WhatsApp may soon let users to pick who sees their status updates
The messaging giant is borrowing a page from Instagram’s playbook as it pushes to give users finer control over their social circles.
CALIFORNIA: WhatsApp is quietly working on a feature that could make its Status function considerably smarter and considerably more private.
According to reports from beta tracking platforms, the app is testing a tool called Status lists, which would allow users to create named groups such as close friends, family and colleagues, and control precisely which group sees each update. It is a meaningful step up from the platform’s current blunt instruments, which offer only three options: share with all contacts, exclude specific people, or manually select individuals each time.
The new feature draws an obvious comparison with Instagram’s Close Friends function, and the resemblance is unlikely to be accidental. Both platforms sit within Meta’s family, and the company has been nudging them toward a common logic of audience segmentation for some time.
The move also fits neatly into WhatsApp’s broader privacy push. The platform has been rolling out enhanced chat protections and is exploring the introduction of usernames, which would allow users to connect without exchanging phone numbers. Status lists extend that philosophy from messaging into broadcasting.
Meanwhile, Status itself has been evolving well beyond its origins as a simple photo-and-text slideshow. The feature now supports music stickers, collages, longer videos and interactive elements, pushing it closer to the social-media-style story format pioneered by Snapchat and refined by Instagram. In that context, finer audience controls are not merely a privacy feature. They are a precondition for people sharing more.
The feature remains in development and has not been confirmed for release. WhatsApp routinely tests tools that are later modified or quietly shelved. But the direction of travel is clear: the app wants Status to be a destination, not an afterthought. Letting users decide exactly who is in the audience is how it gets there.
