Biz/Tech

Twitter Names New Head of Product amidst Lagging Growth

Nov 02, 2014 12:29 AM EDT | By Staff Reporter

Twitter Inc. named Kevin Weil head of product, expanding his roles and responsibilities and transferring another company executive into a different position in an effort to counter slowing growth.

Weill will be replacing Daniel Graf, Google's head of consumer product since April. Meanwhile, Graf will be shifter to a special projects job; an anonymous insider from Bloomberg stated and noted that the information is confidential.

Weil was previously head of revenue product and the fifth product head at Twitter in as many years.

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo is putting out efforts to launch new features more quickly, with Twitter trying to build up its user base and expand its tools for advertisers, said the source.

The San Francisco-based company has struggled to increase membership quickly to satisfy investors, even as revenue has risen.

Twitter has been "cycling" its several top executives this year, replacing its chief financial officer and removing its chief operating officer. Twitter reported that just this week, the company gave up analytics manager Adam Kinney as well as top engineering executive Jeremy Gordon.

Twitter claimed that its number of users rose 23 percent to 284 million in the third quarter, down from 24 percent growth in the prior period. Sales more than doubled to $361.3 million, according to its Oct. 27 report.

"As the company grows and you go through these changes, the team is going to evolve," Costolo said on Oct. 27 about the company's management changes.

Graf's hiring in April precipitated disagreements between Costolo and then-COO Ali Rowghani, people familiar with the matter have said. Rowghani resigned in June.

Graf had reorganized the product team around an inner circle of recent hires, people familiar with the matter have said.

In order to put more attention to adding members and keeping new users, Graf put down a slew of side projects.

Bloomberg reports that Twitter shares rose 0.3 percent to $41.93 at 10:10 a.m. in New York. Through yesterday, they are down more than 34 percent this year, compared with a 7.9 increase in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

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