The departure of Twitter’s chief operating officer this week had echoes of the messaging platform’s infant years, when fighting and factions led to one chief executive being pushed out after another.
Twitter was once described as the “clown car that fell into the gold mine” by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg because of its mismanagement. However, Dick Costolo, Twitter chief executive, had reigned over a period of relative calm in the last three and a half years. He helped assemble a senior leadership team, started generating revenue and took the company public last November.
Now that the share price has tumbled more than 40 per cent so far this year, Mr Costolo has a new task: convincing investors that Twitter can reverse slowing user growth by broadening the appeal of its product.
Even though the company has been beating its revenue targets, investors appear to be more focused on user growth, which had dropped to a rate of 6 per cent quarter-on-quarter by the last earnings statement in April.
Mr Costolo had charged Ali Rowghani, chief operating officer, with overseeing the redesign of the site to address criticism that it put off and baffled new users with its own language dotted with # and @ signs.
Now the chief executive has become frustrated with the pace of change, but by parting ways with Mr Rowghani he runs the risk of once again splitting the company.
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