Steve Ballmer's Quick Advice To Dorsey: Quit Square

Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft Corporation MSFT, offered some advice to Twitter Inc TWTR CEO Jack Dorsey.

Ballmer is a major Twitter shareholder and bought an approximate 4 percent stake in the company back in 2015, although his purchase did cause a great deal of confusion.

Q4 Review

Dorsey delivered another disappointing quarter to investors. Aside from a revenue miss in the fourth quarter, Twitter's ad revenue fell on a year-over-year basis for the first time since its initial public offering. The company also reported the poorest quarterly revenue growth dating back to its IPO.

Twitter's stock was trading lower by more than 10 percent Thursday morning.

One Tech Leader To Another

Speaking as a guest on CNBC's "Squawk Box" segment, Ballmer started off by stating that Dorsey's dual-role as CEO of both Twitter and Square Inc SQ is "probably not the best idea."

Nevertheless, Ballmer acknowledged that Dorsey is a very creative and innovative tech leader based on the fact that he created these same two companies he continues to run to this day. However, now is the time for Dorsey to focus on just one company: Twitter.