One on One: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo

Dick Costolo

Dick Costolo is the CEO of Twitter and was its former COO. He took over as CEO from Evan Williams in October 2010.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Michigan and a master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Costolo became involved in theater during his sophomore year at the University of Michigan, when he began taking theater classes to fulfill the university's graduation requirements. Upon graduation, he decided not to accept offers from technology companies and instead moved to Chicago to work in improvisational comedy.

In 2004, Costolo, along with Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, and Matt Shobe, founded the web feed management provider FeedBurner. After Google bought FeedBurner in 2007, Dick Costolo became an employee of the search giant. After the acquisition, Costolo began working in other areas of Google. In July 2009, he left Google, and in September 2009, it was announced that he was joining Twitter as its COO. Although his 2010 takeover as CEO was supposed to be temporary, while CEO Evan Williams was on paternity leave, it eventually became a permanent position.

In May 2011, it was announced that President Obama had appointed Dick Costolo to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee along with Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group Scott Charney and McAfee President of Security David DeWalt.