• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 23, 2018

Twitter is losing its COO Anthony Noto, the social giant said Tuesday.

Noto -- who is credited with contributing to Twitter’s financial turnaround over the past year or so -- is leaving to take the CEO spot at financial technology company Social Finance.

“SoFi has a significant opportunity to build on its leadership position in student and personal loans to revolutionize consumer finance and build a next-generation financial services company,” Noto stated.

As of Tuesday, Twitter wasn’t ready to name a new COO. At least in the short term, existing members of its leadership team are expected to take on Noto’s responsibilities for business operations and revenue generating operations.

Meanwhile, Matt Derella, Twitter’s vice president of global revenue and operations, will continue to lead the company’s ad sales efforts.

Noto assumed the COO role at Twitter after it lost Adam Bain in late 2016. At the time, Noto was already serving as Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer. In exchange for replacing Bain, Noto reportedly received a stock package worth up to $12 million a year.

After years of financial uncertainty, Twitter has racked up a series of strong quarters, since 2016. Along with a healthy bump in monthly users, Twitter most recently reported better-than-expect third-quarter sales for 2017.

While quarterly revenue of $590 million was down 4% year-over-year, it was still better than what analysts had predicted.  

During the third quarter of 2017, Twitter’s data business also experienced its third consecutive quarter of accelerating year-over-year growth. Ned Segal, Twitter’s current CFO, said the company’s momentum was driven by improved execution from its sales team and strength in video and direct response ad formats.

Analysts seemed pleased with Twitter’s most recent performance.

“Underlying revenue trends provided confidence that the company is on track toward a resumption of top-line growth,” Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at Pivotal Research, said in a research note. Wieser was particularly impressed that Twitter’s largest 100 advertisers increased spending on the platform by 23% globally and 7% domestically.

“This reinforces our observation that many advertisers like and value Twitter as a marketing platform and continue to use it,” Wieser noted.

Last year, Social Finance -- which goes by the abbreviated name SoFi -- surpassed $25 billion in funded loans. Since its founding in 2011, the company has grown to more than 430,000 members.