seitelLast week, Twitter Interim CEO Jack Dorsey conducted his first conference call with investors since rejoining the company he co-founded to rescue it from stock market catastrophe.

Returning hero Dorsey couldn’t have asked for a more fortuitous moment to return. His immediate predecessor, Dick Costolo, did little in his six years in the saddle to convince investors that the world’s #1 micro blogger could grow its users and monetize its worldwide name recognition.

When Costolo stepped down and Dorsey reentered in June, investors perked up. Here was Steve Jobs returning to Apple. Moreover, Twitter was poised to announce promising results.

Which is precisely what the company did, indeed, announce last week, after the market closed. Twitter reported that revenues for the quarter increased $502 million, a jump of 61% year-over-year, exceeding analyst projections. Twitter delivered strong growth in its advertising business, with ad revenues rising by 63%. Promoted tweets, in particular, showed strength and hope for the future.

In response, Twitter’s stock immediately soared in the after hours market. And then Jack Dorsey opened his mouth.

Just as his company transmits 140 characters in nano seconds, it took the new CEO just two sentences to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

“We've been very successful at monetization with a strong Q2, delivering over $500 million in revenue and more than $120 million in EBITDA,” he began.

“However, product initiatives we've mentioned in previous earnings calls, like instant timelines and logged-out experiences, have not yet had meaningful impact on growing our audience or participation. This is unacceptable and we're not happy about it.”

Oy. Oy. Oy.

The stock plummeted, and the public relations tone deaf wunderkind continue to hang crepe around the company that had earned him billions in the IPO market, until finally – after no more than 10 minutes of excruciating doom and gloom – he turned the mike over to his CFO to try to pick up the pieces.

Now clearly, CEOs must tell the truth about their companies and can never lie. And candor is good. But there is a difference between being candid and being unnecessarily negative. And no CEO in his right mind should feel obligated to find the most discouraging words to flagellate his own company and, by extension, the poor misguided shareholders (full disclosure, like me!!!) who own his miserable stock.

The point is that there’s a reason companies hire public relations people to help them with phraseology and language, for example to express “challenges” in a way that doesn’t telegraph to the investing public that “no one here has a clue how to fix the problem.”

Here are three small examples of what Dorsey said to sink his stock, compared to what a public relations interpreter might have recommended he say.

Dorsey: “Over the past few weeks, I've had a chance to get a deeper understanding of where I need to focus our team. We need to do three things. One, we need to ensure a more disciplined execution. Two, we need to simplify our service to deliver Twitter's value faster. And three we need to better communicate our value.

PR: “ Over the past few weeks, I've been impressed with the quality of our labor force and commitment. My focus will be on three things. One, ensuring a disciplined execution of our strategies. Two, delivering Twitter’s acknowledged value to clients even faster by simplifying trusted services. And three, leading the effort to communicate this great value to the investing public.”

Dorsey: “We haven't done a great job at aligning the entire Company around our total audience strategy. We're in the process of implementing a stronger discipline of direct ownership and accountability that clearly serves a single strategy in order to increase our reach, value to people and participation.”

PR: “ We’re implementing a stronger discipline of direct ownership and accountability around a total audience strategy. This will be aimed to increase our reach, value to people and participation.”

Dorsey: “We have unbelievably high brand awareness globally. People all over the world know of the power of Twitter, but it's not clear why they should harness it themselves.”

PR: “We have unbelievably high brand awareness globally. People all over the world acknowledge the power of Twitter, and we are deploying a strategy to help them understand how to harness this power themselves.”

For time immemorial, savvy CEOs have used language like this, not to deny problems, but to instill confidence that we’re moving forward in a positive direction. That is not to suggest that most of today’s wet-behind-the ears, instant Internet billionaires like Dorsey – a 30-something programmer with a backwoods beard and know-it-all attitude, more reminiscent of the Smith Brothers than Lee Iacocca – even possess the capability or inclination to become “savvy CEOs.”

After Dorsey’s disastrous conference call as Twitter’s stock sunk 15% for the week, one nitwit analyst with a “buy” recommendation on Twitter said of the CEO, “I like that he speaks directly. I think he’s doing very well.”

Maybe I can get him to buy my stock at a premium.

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Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He may be reached directly at [email protected].