Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey steps down; social media company names CTO Parag Agrawal as replacement

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on Monday stepped down a the social media network's CEO.

Dorsey tweeted:

The company's chief technology officer Parag Agrawal will succeed Dorsey.

The news, first reported by CNBC, cited unnamed sources and Twitter did not immediately reply to a request seeking comment.

Dorsey is credited with coming up with the idea for Twitter when eventual co-founder Evan Williams gave workers at blogging startup Odeo two weeks to work on fun new projects as a way to break up the daily routine.

Meanwhile, Nasdaq, suspended trading of shares of the social media network citing  "news pending" as the reason.

Twitter's stock, which has consistently underperformed the market, jumped more than 10 percent at the opening bell Monday before trading was halted.

Twitter Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press early Monday.

On Sunday, Dorsey sent the tweet “I love Twitter."

Dorsey is also the top executive at Square, a financial payments company that he founded, and some big investors have openly questioned whether he can be effective leading both.

Twitter has faced some criticism from politicians recently.  Former president Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, with Dorsey defending the move, saying the 6 January Capitol riot and Trump's tweets after the event resulted in a risk to public safety and created an “extraordinary and untenable circumstance” for the company.

Trump sued the company, along with Facebook and YouTube, in July for alleged censorship.

With inputs from agencies