Twitter Loses 4 Execs in Latest Shake-up

By: Nick Gambino

In the most recent sign of instability for the once mighty Twitter, four key executives have parted ways with the company this past Sunday.

Re/Code was the first to report on the shake-up which Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, then confirmed late on Sunday. The four that have departed voluntarily are Katie Stanton, Vice President of Global Media; Kevin Wei, Vice President of Product; Brian “Skip” Schipper, Vice President of Human Resources; Alex Roetter, Vice President of Engineering.

That’s a heck of a lot of “VPs.” Maybe they’re being too generous with that title. Meanwhile outside of the VP world, over at Twitter-owned Vine, General Manager Jason Toff took his leave. He confirmed his departure and plans in a tweet:

“Personal update!” I’m joining Google to work on VR. So much exciting potential there.”

Yikes. If these were truly voluntary departures, and all signs point to “yes”, then it’s hard to not see this as a form of jumping ship.

Twitter has struggled in recent times in an overcrowded social media market. In the last year alone Twitter stock has plummeted 55% which is close to an all-time low.

Growth of their user base has also stalled as the question of “How or why should I use Twitter?” continues to go unanswered. Sure for celebrities or other entities Twitter makes sense but it just hasn’t caught on as the place to go to find out what’s happening in our social circles. We have Facebook and Instagram for that.

Since Dorsey was named the CEO in October he’s been taking strides to make Twitter more profitable, a tall task seeing as though the service has never turned a profit. One of the first things he did was lay off over 300 employees or 8% of their workforce.

We’ll have to see what this recent shake-up means for Twitter and if Dorsey is capable of righting the ship. In two weeks they’ll be reporting their Q4 earnings but we may have to wait for this year’s Q1 earnings as the true test.

What do you think? Is Twitter capable of being saved?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Gambino is a regular script writer and tech beat reporter for NewsWatch.  He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and daughter.