Twitter Fires Greg Gopman, Head Of VR, Over Comments

Greg Gopman, head of Twitter’s burgeoning virtual reality efforts, has been shown the door after less than one week on the job.

The struggling social giant apparently reconsidered the new hire after it was brought to their attention that Gopman had previously disparaged San Francisco’s homeless population.

“And I'm fired,” Gopman said in a Facebook post on Wednesday. “Thanks TechCrunch."

It was TechCrunch that first posted Gopman’s tasteless and insensitive remarks about homeless men and women, which were made in 2013.

“I’ve traveled around the world, and I gotta say there is nothing more grotesque than walking down market st in San Francisco,” Gopman wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post. “In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city.”

Reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson declined to discuss the matter. “As a matter of company policy, we don't comment on topics related to employee's personal matters,” she said.

Twitter just hired AngelHack founder Gregory Gopman to boost its early efforts in virtual reality. Among other efforts, Twitter is reportedly developing native 360-degree video integration, as well as 360-degree live streaming. Gopman most recently worked for UploadVR -- a virtual reality news site, event organizer and co-working space.

Despite its best efforts -- which included bringing back co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO, last year -- Twitter continues to struggle. Recently, data emerged showing that ad agencies are increasingly bypassing the platform in favor other social networks -- Instagram especially.

That might explain why Twitter recently slashed its second-quarter revenue guidance from $610 million to $590 million  -- nowhere near analyst expectations of $678 million.

eMarketer recently released a forecast suggesting that Snapchat will overtake Twitter in terms of domestic users before the end of the year. More broadly, Twitter has seen few successes since its IPO in 2013. Rather than right its ship, Dorsey has seen Twitter’s stock sink since his return last October.  

Twitter is still exploring a sale or merger, but the list of potential suitors continues to shrink.

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