Twitter CEO Dick Costolo leaves, turns over leadership to Jack Dorsey amid shareholders complaints of slow company growth

Twitter chief executive officer Dick Costolo will step down in July amid shareholder complaints of the company's failure to keep up with its competitors.

Twitter Inc. tweeted the leadership change saying Costolo will remain on the board while co-founder and Board Chairman Jack Dorsey takes over as interim CEO.

Costolo has reportedly grown tired of Wall Street's obssession with the social network's slow user and advertising growth despite the early progress of his team's strategy to reinvigorate the company products, according to the New York Times.

A Reuters report also points to investor complaints despite a second quarter showing of expected revenues amounting to at least $470 million.

In an investors' conference call discussing the leadership transition, Costolo talked about his decision to leave at a time "when the org is stable and the product is robust."

Twitter has 302 million monthly active users of the unique 140-character messaging service compared to Facebook's 1.44 billion. However, investors are more concerned about the sluggish user growth with Twitter monthly active users falling 30% from 2013 to 2015 and indicators pointing to a slowdown of 6% by 2019, according to The Guardian.

The Guardian also reports that one of the company's biggest shareholders, Chris Sacca, published last week an 8,500-word essay that calls for leadership change in the company citing Twitter's failure to meet user growth expectations and inability to maximize the number of users who signed up and did not come back. Sacca also noted shortcomings in advertising revenues.

The company stock is trading near a six-month low, Sacca added. The company stocks registered a brief share price hike by 7% percent in after-hours trading upon Thursday's announcement of Costolo's stepping down, according to NY Times.

The Reuters report quotes Nate Elliot of management consultant Forrester Research as saying Twitter remained unchanged despite the introduction of new features and functionality by other social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

The Twitter chief steps down after 6 years, giving the leadership reins back to Dorsey who was booted out as CEO in 2008.