Twitter Shakeup: 5 Executives Leave

In a major management shakeup, Twitter is saying goodbye to its senior vice president of engineering Alex Roetter, vice president of human resources Skip Schipper, vice president of global media Katie Stanton, senior vice president of product Kevin Weil, and Vine general manager Jason Toff.

Apart from Toff -- who announced his departure separately -- the soon-to-be-ex executives have all “chosen to leave the company,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey insisted in a Sunday-night tweet.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Dorsey had a hand in their exits -- a claim that the second-time CEO called “inaccurate press rumors.”

Dorsey also announced that Adam Bain, Twitter’s COO, will be given additional responsibilities, including oversight of the company’s revenue-related product teams, its media team and its human resources team. This expanded role is only temporary.

Adam Messinger, the social giant’s chief technology officer, will now oversee a single group that will encompass engineering and consumer product, design and research, user services, and the company's mobile development platform, Fabric.

Twitter has seen few successes since its IPO in 2013. Rather than right its ship, Dorsey has seen Twitter’s stock nearly halve since his return last October.  

As evidenced by the company's sorry stock price, investors don’t seem to be impressed by Dorsey’s direction, from Twitter’s first hardware investment to plans to give up its defining 140-character limit.

Along with slumping user engagement, Twitter is failing to meet analysts’ revenue expectations. Late last year, in fact, the company said it expected fourth-quarter revenue to reach between $695 million and $710 million -- considerably lower than analysts’ estimates of nearly $740 million. 

While maintaining its buy rating on Twitter, Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser just reduced the company’s price target from $43 to $34. Wieser cited “slightly diminished revenue expectations over a multi-year time horizon, and more because of higher capital costs we think are appropriate given reduced confidence investors will have in the stock and the company.”

Separately, Facebook is poised to take up Twitter’s market share with Notify, its recently launched app that encourages users to subscribe to push notifications from various content providers.

No small side project, the new Notify app debuted with more than 70 big-name publishers, including Bloomberg, Comedy Central, CNN and The Weather Channel.

Next story loading loading..