Twitter lost four senior executives in a dramatic shake-up
Four of Twitter’s key executives are leaving the company, it has been confirmed, as the social media site attempts to improve its struggling fortunes.Chief executive Jack Dorsey announced the departure of head of product Kevin Weil and head of media Kate Stanton in a post to the social media site.Head of engineering Alex Roetter and human resources manager Skip Schipper are also leaving.CEO Mr Dorsey thanked them in his tweet, „I’m personally grateful to each of them for everything they’ve contributed to Twitter and our purpose in the world.”
Company stock prices have been falling steadily amid concerns over Twitter’s ability to compete with rivals such as Facebook, and prices have dropped 38 per cent since Mr Dorsey returned last year to the site he co-founded.
Mr Dorsey’s first action was to cut 8% of the company’s total workforce, and now these changes have reached an executive level in order to shake-up the micro-blogging site.
Twitter has struggled to compete as younger services, including Instagram and SnapChat, have gained larger followings rapidly.
Twitter has around 300 million users, while Facebook boasts around 1.4 billion
There have also been strong rumours in recent months that the site will remove its 140-character limit on tweets – Chinese equivalent Sina Weibo has already announced it is doing just that at the end of January.The speculation comes following Mr Dorsey himself admitting last year that Twitter remains too complicated for many people, as the number of new users joining the site has stagnated.Twitter has around 300 million users, while Facebook boasts around 1.4 billion.Last year, Twitter also replaced its ‘Favourite’ feature with a ‘Like’ button, similar to Facebook.
As part of the staff overhaul, Mr Dorsey also confirmed that chief technical officer Adam Messinger would take over the engineering and consumer products parts of the business.”He has a very strong sense of how to bring our development together so we can continue to ship faster and produce stronger work that people will love to use,” said Mr Dorsey.”And I will be partnering with him day and night to make sure we’re building the right experiences.”
