Two years after returning as Twitter Inc.’s chief executive officer, Jack Dorsey has pulled the company back from the brink, persuading people to spend more time on the micro-blogging site and attracting more advertising. Investors ratified his efforts this week, when Twitter posted a surprise surge in revenue growth and a first-ever profit. The shares rose 12 percent.
Now the question is whether Dorsey can build on the momentum and turn his company into a true rival to Facebook Inc. Twitter badly needs to attract new users—something it failed to do this past quarter. Facebook does it in part by innovating and rolling out a steady stream of new products. But Dorsey has struggled to unleash Twitter’s creative spirit.
