Four senior Twitter executives are leaving the media company, chief executive officer Jack Dorsey tweeted late on Sunday night, the biggest leadership changes since Dorsey returned as chief executive as he struggles to revive the company’s growth.
Media chief Katie Jacobs Stanton, product chief Kevin Weil, engineering division chief Alex Roetter, and human resources chief Brian “Skip” Schipper are all to leave the company, he said.
Addressing what he called inaccurate media rumors, Dorsey praised the four executives and said that he was sad to announce their departures.
Twitter’s stock has fallen nearly 50 percent since Dorsey’s return last year and is now trading below its initial public offering price amid concern the company has failed to significantly boost its user base despite a quicker pace of product rollouts under Dorsey.
Twitter’s video streaming service chief Jason Toff on Sunday night tweeted that he was also leaving Twitter to join Google to work on virtual reality. Dorsey’s tweet did not mention him.
In an earnings conference call in October, Dorsey spoke about “hiring and investing in talent” and the need for “bold rethinking.”
Twitter might announce other executive changes, including the recruitment of a new chief marketing officer, a according to a source familiar with the matter said. The company is to announce two new board members soon, the person added.
Dorsey tweeted that chief operating officer Adam Bain is to take on additional responsibilities as a result of the departures, including revenue-related product teams and the human resources team.
Chief technical officer Adam Messinger is to handle the engineering team, he said.
Weil, Stanton, Schipper and Roetter are among the highest-level departures in recent months, but several executives have left Twitter since cofounder Dorsey stepped in as interim chief executive officer in July last year. He has since been named Twitter chief executive officer.
Dorsey, who is also chief executive officer of financial services technology company Square, has yet to lay out a detailed plan of what he wants Twitter to do differently. Dorsey plans a retreat with Twitter executives this week, the source said.
Weil has been at Twitter since 2009, although he has only served as its product head for about a year. He has often served as a face of the company, speaking at conferences and hinting at new developments on the site, such as a character count that would exceed the current 140-character limit.
Twitter has shuffled through three product heads since 2014, and Dorsey has played an increasingly large role in product development.
Stanton joined the company in 2010 and was tasked with growing its audience outside the US. She previously worked at Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, as well as the White House and US Department of State.
Twitter, which has just over 300 million users, had its slowest user growth last year and was eclipsed by photo-sharing app Instagram, owned by Facebook Inc, which surpassed 400 million users last year.
Since his return, Dorsey has launched Moments, a product developed by Weil, which showcases Twitter’s best tweets and content, laid off 300 workers and hired former Google executive Omid Kordestani as executive chairman.
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