Twitter’s chief Jack Dorsey shows faith with $7 million Valentine’s shares buy

Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey has splurged $7 million (£5.6 million) on stock in the struggling social network which has just missed Wall Street revenue expectations and suffered grindingly slow user growth.

Twitter’s shares are down almost 10% over the past week, after its fourth-quarter earnings guidance that fell far short of forecasts and new users grew under 1%.

Dorsey (pictured) tweeted news of his purchase last night with the Valentine-themed “love Twitter” hashtag.

That triggered sarcastic tweet responses such as “you trying to go broke on Valentine’s Day?” and criticism of his job-share at Twitter alongside Square, the other company where he serves as chief executive.

One commenter wrote: “If you *really* love Twitter, you should focus 100% of your CEO time on it.”

Dorsey, who has promised Twitter will be “more inventive and take bigger risks”, bought about 426,000 of the shares, at prices from $15.84 to $16.60, adding up to around $7 million.

The 40-year-old, who is worth $1.27 billion according to Forbes, has been Twitter’s cheerleader in chief with his wallet before, buying more than 31,000 shares in Twitter for about $875,000 in August 2015, which he tweeted was his “Investing in Twitter’s future”.