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Only good thing about Twitter CEO storm: 140 character limit gone

Big Dick slips out, Jack's off into the hot seat: Chief exec quits

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo will leave the San Francisco-headquartered social network within days. Shares in Twitter soared nearly eight per cent on the news.

The microblogging site said in a SEC filing, published in the past few minutes, that Costolo will leave as chief exec on July 1 and be replaced by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey:

On June 11, 2015, Twitter, Inc. announced that Richard Costolo has decided to step down as Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, effective July 1, 2015. Twitter’s Board of Directors has named Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board, to serve as Interim Chief Executive Officer while the Board conducts a search for Twitter’s next CEO.

Twitter said Costolo will continue to serve on the company's board of directors. Dorsey left Twitter a while back to become the CEO of Square Inc, and will keep that job while temporarily at the helm of Twitter. The microblogging biz will search for a long-term replacement while Dorsey keeps her sailing steady.

Costolo joined Twitter in 2009 as chief operating officer, and took over the CEO chair a year later when cofounder Ev Williams stepped away from the top job. Though Twitter has become one of the most popular sites on the web with 300 million active users, and has 3,900 employees (that's not a typo), the site has yet to turn a profit.

Its most recent financial report [PDF] showed the upstart lost $162m despite $436m in sales (revenue was up 74 per cent year-on-year, but below forecast) in Q1 2015.

In other Twitter news, those who wish to chat to friends will no longer be limited to 140 characters for direct messages. That limit will be lifted some time next month, Twitter has confirmed.

In a blog post on the Twitter developer site, direct messages product manager Sachin Agarwal said app programmers will need to update their software to take advantage of the new feature. Normal tweets will continue to have the 140 character limit. ®

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