Commentary

Top Execs Leave Twitter

The high-level shakeup at Twitter continued over the weekend with the departure of four top executives, possibly reflecting disagreements about the future direction of the company under co-founder Jack Dorsey, who returned as CEO last year amid investor worries about the social network’s slowing growth. Dorsey announced the departures in a tweet Sunday evening.

The list of top brass leaving Twitter includes Alex Roetter, senior vice president of engineering; Katie Jacobs Stanton, vice president of global media; Kevin Weil, senior vice president of product; and Brian “Skip” Schipper, vice president of human resources.

According to their own tweets Roetter, Stanton and Weil don’t have another job lined up, although in a blog post Stanton stated she will be working with angel investors and hinted at possible political activity in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; before joining Twitter she led social media strategy for Barack Obama.

Also on Sunday another Twitter exec, Vine general manager Jason Toff, said he is jumping ship for Google’s virtual reality team.

Press reports citing unnamed sources indicate that at least one top-ranking executive was asked to leave, but Dorsey emphasized that the departures were all voluntary. Stanton revealed her plans to leave some time ago but stayed on longer at the company at Dorsey’s request.

Dorsey is also bolstering Twitter’s board of directors, with two new members joining to bring the board to a total of ten; the names of the new board members have yet to be announced.

In addition to new execs to lead its engineering and product divisions, Dorsey will be appointing a new chief marketing officer.

In October of last year Dorsey laid off over 300 employees, equal to 8% of the work force at the time.

Next story loading loading..