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Twitter co-founder Williams steps down as CEO

Laser focused on 'product strategy'

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams has stepped down as the company's chief executive, but he will remain with the micro-blogging outfit in a new role "completely focused on product strategy."

"I am most satisfied while pushing product direction. Building things is my passion, and I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build," Williams said in a (macro) blog post. "

COO Dick Costolo takes over as CEO, a year after he was famously hired to sort out the company's business model. Since Costolo joined the company, Twitter has inked tweet-sharing deals with Google, Microsoft Bing, and, well, Yahoo!, before introducing its "promoted tweets" advertising setup.

"When I insisted on bringing Dick into the COO role a year ago, I got a lot of questions from my board. But I knew Dick would be a strong complement to me, and this has proven to be the case," William wrote. "During his year at Twitter, he has been a critical leader in devising and executing our revenue efforts, while simultaneously and effectively making the trains run on time in the office."

Evan Williams founded Twitter in 2006 alongside people named Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey. Dorsey was the company's first CEO, and when he left the company two years ago, Williams stepped into the chief exec role.

Two weeks ago, Twitter unveiled a beta version of a revamped website designed to grab hold of more user eyeballs, and with over 160 million registered users worldwide, the service has become quite the media darling in recent months. But it's yet to be seen whether micro-blogging can indeed be transformed into a big money maker. ®

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