'Marhaba Dubai': Twitter chief Jack Dorsey lands in the UAE

Sheikh Maktoum meets social media entrepreneur as the Dubai royal launches a Twitter account to mark the occasion

Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, meets Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter, on Monday, and opens his own account for the first time. Dubai Media Office 

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey landed in the UAE on Monday morning, and met Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed, Deputy Ruler of Dubai.

To mark the occasion, Sheikh Maktoum launched his Twitter account in front of Dorsey. The account was immediately verified, and as of Monday afternoon had 600 followers (going from 200 to 600 in a matter of minutes).

"Dubai and Twitter share many aspects in common," Sheikh Maktoum tweeted about the Twitter co-founder's visit to the executive office in Dubai. "Both stand as global hubs open for people, build bridges of understanding and dialogue among nations and represent platforms to nurture youth’s energies and creativity."

Earlier in the day, Dorsey tweeted a photo of his passport with a UAE entry stamp, and the greeting 'marhaba Dubai'.

The photo of Dorsey's shows a sticker in his passport, with the Twitter logo and the Dubai skyline (definitely not standard issue):

Dorsey is on a 'Tweep Tour', visiting the social media company's offices around the world. Last week, he visited Dublin, while in the past few months he has stopped off in London, Hamburg, Paris, Madrid, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore.

The co-founder of Periscope, Kavyon Beykpour, is joining Dorsey on the tour. He shared this photo from the Dubai Twitter office:

Dorsey is the co-founder and chief executive of Twitter, as well as the chief executive of mobile payments company Square. Twitter has 35 offices around the world, and 12 of those are in the United States.

The only office in the Mena region is in Dubai.

The San Francisco company bundles the UAE in as part of Europe, Middle East, Africa, but its offices in this territory are overwhelmingly in Europe: Berlin, Brussels, Dubai, Dublin, Hamburg, London, Madrid and Paris.

While in France on the Tweep Tour, Dorsey met President Emmanuel Macron:

Dorsey has recently been escalating efforts to rid the site of toxic content amid heightened concerns that social-media companies have failed to curb the exploitation of personal data, election meddling and hateful posts.

Having long been criticised for relying on users to report abuse, the company recently said 38 per cent of abusive content is now being found through technology and flagged for human review, up from none last year.

"We are now removing 2.5x more Tweets that share personal information and 38 per cent of abusive tweets that are taken down every week are being proactively detected by machine learning models," he said.

“We are reducing the burden on victims and, where possible, taking action before abuse is reported."