Twitter's Dorsey gets $1.40 salary in nod to old character limit

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey received his first salary since returning to the chief executive officer role four years ago: 140 cents.

The conspicuously modest sum, disclosed Monday in a regulatory filing, equals the original character limit for tweets on the company’s social network, a restriction the San Francisco-based firm scrapped in 2017 to boost user engagement.

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Dorsey has for years elected to not receive any salary, bonuses or stock awards from Twitter “as a testament to his commitment to and belief in Twitter’s long-term value creation potential,” the filing said.

The 140-character limit - a relic of a previous technological era - was the maximum that could fit in mobile text messages when the service started in 2006, before the mass adoption of smartphones.

The limit was increased to 280 characters in late 2017. It’s unclear if Dorsey’s salary will double, too.