Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s been under fire lately, but today, Jack Dorsey, the social network’s cofounder and chairman, made a public show of rallying around him.
The company’s stock price, currently hovering around $36, has struggled for months to stay above its IPO debut, when it opened at $45.10. This time last year, the stock began climbing above $60, but took a major beating in May when the lockup period expired.
As Twitter tries to prove to Wall Street that it can appeal to a mainstream audience, it’s also been undergoing a bit of a management shuffle, bringing in a new chief financial officer, head of media, and vice president of product (its second in sixth months and fifth in as many years).
A week ahead of Twitter’s Feb. 5 earnings release, Dorsey fired off a 17-tweet tweetstorm, waxing poetic about the social network’s cultural impact—”The Twitter bird has come to stand for empowerment and a positive force in civil society”—and offering high praise for Costolo.
“@ev rightly pointed out there isn’t a single person who has been thinking longer about Twitter than @dickc,” Dorsey tweeted. “@dickc was one of our first angel investors, our advisor, our COO, the creator of our revenue engine, and our CEO who assembled the team.”
Here’s the entirety of Dorsey’s tweetstorm: