On Thursday, Twitter (TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey announced about key changes in the leadership team along with a change in its reporting structure. Dorsey sent an email to its employees explaining the rationale behind the change in the organizational structure without revealing details about how the social networking site is going to evolve in the near future. Shares of social media company dropped 2.5% when the market ended on Friday.
The company is moving towards a functional-based structure from product-based reporting, which Dorsey believes will equip the social networking site to face the impending challenges and take timely decisions for the next 10 years, as he said, “We are moving back to a functional organization.”
As part of the reshuffle, Kayvon Beykpour will be heading the product division replacing Ed Ho who is on leave due to personal reasons. Ho is planning to contribute on safety-related initiatives on a part-time basis. It’s worth noting that Beykpour will be the sixth person who is leading the product function in the last five years, called as a “cursed” job by Vanity Fair. Mike Montano will be taking over the engineering division which was earlier looked after by Ho.
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Twitter is at the crossroads. The microblogging site needs to come up with a solid plan on how it wants to take the platform going forward amidst nimble rivals. Frequent leadership changes on the product division have made things worse for the company. It’s a well-known fact that right from the beginning the platform has been abused by trollers and bots which has irked its users.
The company has been at the receiving end as it failed to tackle the menace in an effective manner, which was agreed by Dorsey. The recent acquisition of Smyte is expected to help Twitter to improve the user experience by keeping a tab on fake news, trolls, abuses, and bots.
In the recently reported quarter, Twitter reported 21% jump in revenues, which topped market estimates pushing the shares up 13% post the release. It ended the March quarter with 336 million users, recording growth in Daily Active Users and Monthly Active Users. The addition of news and video to its platform seem to be bearing fruit. Revenue from video ads contributed half of the total ad revenues.
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Twitter wants to give prominence to video and it’s worth noting that Beykpour, now donning the products division, was earlier looking after the videos business as General Manager. With the new structure in place, Dorsey and his team have a multitude of tasks to look at, right from framing a clear product roadmap to handling abuses to staying abreast with the changing social media landscape. Whether the Bluebird will fly high over the next decade, let’s wait for Dorsey’s tweet!