I know a lot of the early history, I worked there when we hired both Jack and Biz. I can tell you that it's a really good thing that Biz is back on board. Biz was able to articulate what twitter was as the human voice of the company in both directions. From day one the question was always, what does Biz do.<p>Biz bounced around but when he was there things were better. Kind of like the basketball player that Nate Silver likes to love, who doesn't have any stat which makes them star, but everybody else around them plays better when they're there. Biz isn't a business guy, nor product, nor code, nor support, nor really marketing. But when he's in the room, working with people, everybody's better at all of those things.<p>He can play a kind of court jester role, which is disarming, but he's super damned sharp. He uses stories and humor to bring people forward.<p>Having him there, working on twitter means there are now two people in senior roles who aren't afraid of breaking twitter, because they created it in the first place.<p>In recent years, talking to twitter employees you get this amnesia over the company's culture and history. People don't know where things came from, they don't know the story of how the came to be. The myth's are complicated and messy. And eventually go so messy the company stopped telling the story of how twitter came to be where it is now all together.<p>With Biz back, he can take on that internal story telling, creating a hero's journey that the company can believe in. Because he's there, as an equal to Jack in understanding the origin, he can tear things down without fear of destroying somebody else's house of cards.
"Stone explained that his top focus will be guiding company culture.
'It’s important that everyone understands the whole story of Twitter and each of our roles in that story. I’ll shape the experience internally so it’s also felt outside the company.' – Biz Stone<p>Of the things twitter needs - strategy? product direction? revenue? - is "guiding the company culture" really that high on the list?
I have to imagine he wouldn't be going back unless he felt he could do something to improve the company's fortunes. It'll be interesting to see if he does have something up his sleeve.
It's possible the role is fluid because he's being groomed to take the company over from Jack. I don't think anyone can argue that Jack is doing a good job as CEO but Biz would carry some of the same goodwill that put Jack in the role and might actually be better equipped to turn the company around.<p>Or he's just "putting the band" back together and next month they will launch their own version of Snapchat's filtered selfies. Who knows.
I hope this is a predecessor for him taking over from Jack Dorsey.<p>I don't understand how anyone thinks Dorsey can run both Twitter and Square at the same time.