Twitter Names Weil Consumer Product Head

Even by Silicon Valley standards, Twitter’s management shifts are enough to make anyone dizzy. Just days after parting with its product engineering head and analytics lead, the microblogging giant has replaced Daniel Graf with Kevin Weil as consumer product head.

Graf, who defected from Google just six ago months ago, is not leaving Twitter. Rather, he will retain his title as product vice president, and focus on strategic initiatives.

Weil was previously in charge of revenue products at Twitter, including its MoPub mobile ad exchange, and other ad offerings. Now heading up consumer products, Weil will be expected to ramp up innovation at Twitter.   

The changes come just days after CEO Dick Costolo expressed his displeasure with the pace of product development at Twitter. While insisting that the company remains on the right track, Costolo told analysts on Monday that it is “more critical than ever that we increase the pace of [product and idea] execution.”

The comment came during an earnings call on which Twitter revealed user growth -- and a fourth-quarter revenue forecast of $440 to $450 million -- that fell short of analysts’ hopes.

In line with analysts’ expectations, Twitter said it saw revenue rise to $361 million in the third quarter -- up 114% year-over-year. During the quarter, Twitter recorded 284 million average monthly active users (MAUs), which represented an increase of 23% year-over-year, but just 5% quarter-over-quarter.

Timeline views reached 181 billion during the quarter -- an increase of 14% year-over-year. Stateside, however, Timeline views per monthly active user actually fell from 793 to 774, quarter-over-quarter.

Twitter’s recent management changes are many. Just weeks ago, Vivian Schiller relinquished her post as head of news and journalism partnerships after less than a year on the job. On the developer side, Twitter engineering senior vice president Chris Fry departed in May. Also this year, Chloe Sladden resigned as head of media at Twitter, and not long after, COO Ali Rowghani and CFO Mike Gupta both left the company.

 Despite strong ad revenue, some Twitter watchers don’t like the way the company is being managed. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel recently made headlines after calling Twitter “a horribly mismanaged company” -- and with “probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there.”

“It's such a solid franchise, it may even work with all that,” the early Facebook investor said during a televised “Squawk Box” interview last month.

At Google, Graf led the search giant’s Maps division, where he spearheaded the launch of Map OS app after Apple opted to use a homegrown Maps app in iOS 6.

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