Jack Dorsey wasted no time at Twitter's annual Flight developer conference this morning, telling the crowd that his company has effectively failed developers and would like to say sorry. Dorsey says that Twitter has a lot of work to rebuild the relationship with the software community, which it's soiled by acting in unpredictable fashion, shutting off access to its platform, and ignoring the fact that developers made the service what it is today.
"We want to come to you today and first and foremost apologize for our confusion," Dorsey said onstage. "We want to reset our relationship and we want to make sure that we are learning, that we are listening, and that we are rebooting." Dorsey made sure to mention some of the company's missteps, like shutting off access to the group of websites known as Politwoops that archived politicians' deleted tweets. "Twitter stands for speaking truth to power," Dorsey added. He did not clarify whether the company would reverse its decision however.
"We are learning, we are listening, and we are rebooting."
Twitter is undergoing one of its most critical transformations with Dorsey now at the helm as official CEO starting earlier this month. The social network has struggled with both investors and Wall Street to show growth potential. Coupled with its continued reputation as a hive of online harassment, Twitter is not an inviting place to be on the internet for those who aren't well versed in the service and tend to use it for their jobs.
Dorsey is trying to fix the mess. The company this month launched Moments, a tool for helping people better dive into the service for breaking news stories and live events. A week later it laid off up to 336 employees, or 8 percent of its workforce, to slim down its engineering and product operations. Now Dorsey wants developers to flock back to Twitter and help reinvigorate it.
"It’s not going to happen overnight, but I commit to you that we will make the right decisions and serve this community in the right way," Dorsey said. "Twitter is the most revolutionary communications tools of our time and we want to make sure we continue to build it and make it great."