Jonathan Schwartz, the last chief executive of Sun Microsystems, has become the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation.
Late Wednesday night, Schwartz used Twitter to publish a haiku about his exit from Oracle, which just completed its purchase of Sun last week.
“Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more,” Schwartz wrote.
Schwartz has been fond of using the Internet as a soapbox. At Sun, he became the first chief executive of a major company to put up his own blog — on which he first mentioned he would be moving on from Sun.
Schwartz also pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission to put blogs on equal footing with press releases and filings when it comes to disclosing business matters to investors.
Schwartz replaced Sun co-founder Scott McNealy as chief executive in 2006, amid declining sales.
During his tenure Sun released a majority of its top software products under open-source licenses, hoping to attract new customers that would translate into sales of hardware products.
But sales continued to decline as many of its customers were pummelled in the downturn.
{{/usCountry}}But sales continued to decline as many of its customers were pummelled in the downturn.
{{/usCountry}}I.B.M. moved to acquire Sun, only to have negotiations stall, opening the door for Oracle.
Oracle's chief executive, Larry Ellison, is not especially fond of Schwartz. He had said last week that he expected Schwartz to resign rather than play a role in the combined company.
The New York Times