Parag Agrawal: Who Is The New, Unknown Twitter CEO?

Another individual of Indian ancestry has been named CEO of a major technology firm. Following Jack Dorsey's resignation as CEO, Twitter's board of directors nominated Parag Agrawal, the company's CTO, as the new CEO.

According to the BBC, Agrawal has become the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500. He was unanimously appointed as the new CEO by the Board of Directors. He started at Twitter in 2011 and worked his way up to become the company's chief technology officer.

He's been described as a steady hand, and he's got a big task ahead of him. However, in India, where the microblogging network has more than 30 million users, the announcement of his nomination has sparked joy.

Some people praised his appointment on Twitter. He is currently the youngest CEO of an S&P 500 corporation. According to a netizen, he joined a lengthy list of Indian CEOs of global technology companies.

Agrawal holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford University and is a famed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduate. Before joining Twitter, he worked in various research jobs at Microsoft, Yahoo, and US telecoms major AT&T, according to his LinkedIn page.

He oversaw Twitter's technological strategy as a chief technology officer, directing efforts to "increase development pace while advancing the state of machine learning across the company," according to the company.

All of Agrawal's past tasks were hidden from prying eyes. Still, with his new appointment, he has gone from relative obscurity to a big public figure overnight, and his every move will be scrutinized.

Some have already used a tweet he sent in 2010 - a quote from the Daily Show - as proof that he is left-leaning, with several characterizing him as racist. Agrawal is yet to make an official remark.

Here are some more interesting facts about Agrawal:

Problems Agrawal Solved on Twitter

According to The Verge, Agrawal oversaw efforts in 2018 to hasten the development of Twitter technology so that new features may be deployed more quickly. As a result, Twitter has made the decision to migrate from its own servers to cloud-based ones such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.

Agrawal was also present to fix major difficulties in the past, such as racial cropping issues with photo previews and explaining the 2018 Twitter password bug, according to the site.

In terms of future difficulties, The Guardian said Agrawal will face growth challenges from adversaries such as TikTok and Instagram and persistent disinformation and hate speech issues.

Agrawal Supervised Twitter's Decentralized Bluesky Platform

Bluesky, the company's major venture into blockchain technologies and decentralized architectures, was announced in December 2019. Dorsey is a supporter of these technologies, which are also known as Web3 technologies and have a variety of other names, including Bitcoin, which is currently the most prominent use.

Twitter also established a dedicated crypto team in November 2021. The new CEO's background in blockchain, the new crypto team, and Dorsey's continued enthusiasm for the technology may hint at what's in store for Twitter – with the possibility that it transitions to the "open and decentralized" standards that Bluesky was built on, as The Verge noted in its story on Agrawal.

Agrawal's Stand on Misinformation

Agrawal was interviewed by the MIT Review about misinformation. The full interview can be found here. But here's a portion of one of Agrawal's statements on identifying misinformation:

"I think that's the, the existential question of our times. Defining misinformation is really, really hard. As we learn through time, our understanding of truth also evolves. We attempt to not adjudicate truth, we focus on potential for harm. And when we say we lean on credible sources, we also lean on all the conversation on the platform that also gets to talk about these credible sources and points out potential gaps as a result of which the credible sources also evolve their thinking or what they talk about."

According to Agrawal, they are more concerned with the "potential for harm as a result of specific content being magnified on the platform," rather than what is true and what is untrue.

On social media platforms, misinformation is still a major concern. It will be one of the problems on which the next CEO will be judged during his tenure.