Twitter Appoints New Product Executive After Six Months (#J360)

Read the original article here: Twitter Appoints Product Chief, Replacing One Named 6 Months Ago [New York Times]

The article above outlines the internal troubles within the social media giant. Troubles that are hard to capture in 140 characters or less, so I won’t even bother trying.

On Thursday, October 30th, The company named Kevin Weil, Twitter’s former head of revenue products (advertising), the new Product Chief. Weil replaces former chief Daniel Graf, a former Google Maps executive, who was brought in six months ago to replace the previous chief, Michael Sippey, who replaced Satya Patel. All of these replacements have been made over the span of a few years, signalling internal troubles. Weil was promoted due to the lack of sign-ups of new accounts under Graf’s leadership. The executives hope to see Weil work his “magic” and see a growth in the quarters to come.

Twitter is no stranger to these internal issues. The article mentions that at one point towards the company’s beginning, the founders had planned plots against each other to overtake the company.

Typically, these changes are announced though the company’s personal Twitter account. Surprisingly, the changes are announced not as professionally as they should be; announcements are bland, cryptic, short and/or unbecoming of business professionals.

As for my personal take, this shows troubling signs in leadership. This is either showing a lack of experience among the higher up or holding expectations way too high. Honestly, I think Twitter as room to move up and raise their fanbase even more, but not as fast as they hope. Twitter has already seen growth almost overnight several times (Egypt and the Occupy movements being big examples). I could be wrong, but I don’t see tremendous growth happening again anytime in the near future, but that’s just me.