By Yoree Koh
Twitter Inc. has demoted its new head of product, Daniel Graf,
just six months after his much-touted hire away from Google
Inc.
Kevin Weil, Twitter's current head of revenue products, will now
oversee the consumer product team as well, according to securities
filing on Thursday. Mr. Weil, a 31-year-old veteran Twitter
executive, takes over a team that has been ensnared by management
changes as it struggles to figure out how to jump-start user
growth.
Mr. Weil becomes Twitter's fifth product head in as many
years.
While Mr. Graf's title--vice president of product--won't change,
he will no longer lead Twitter's consumer product team, according
to a change to his executive bio on the company website.
Going forward, Mr. Graf, who had most recently overseen the
Google Maps mobile product, will focus on certain strategic
initiatives, starting with geo and location features, according to
a person familiar with the matter.
Twitter declined to make Mssrs. Graf and Weil available for
comment.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been under pressure to show
investors it isn't a niche service for the tech savvy but a
must-use service for the mainstream. Twitter has suffered from high
user churn rate, with newcomers turned off by the difficulty of
finding desired information quickly.
Mr. Graf's demotion comes the same week Twitter said it added 13
million monthly active users in the three months through September,
up 4.8%, reaching 284 million users world-wide. While in line with
some analysts' expectations, it is a slower pace than the 6.3% it
added in the previous quarter. Despite doubling revenue, Wall
Street sent the stock down 10% in after-hours trading on
Monday.
On Tuesday, Twitter's stock was down about 0.7% to $41.78. The
stock is down about 34% so far this year, and has fallen 7% since
its first-day closing price in November.
Mr. Weil has risen quickly through the company ranks since he
joined in 2009, responsible for building Twitter's revenue business
from scratch. Twitter reported on Monday that revenue once again
more than doubled in the third quarter to $361 million, surpassing
expectations and causing it to raise guidance for the full
year.
Mr. Weil was elevated to vice president of revenue products last
year and is the youngest executive reporting directly to Mr.
Costolo. He has been praised inside the company for executing plans
quickly, a feat senior executives hope he can replicate with the
troubled consumer product team.
Mr. Graf joined Twitter in April, filling a vacancy left open
since his predecessor, Michael Sippey, stepped down in January. Mr.
Graf is known as an expert in mobile apps, having overseen the
Google Maps mobile product since 2012. But until his hire, he
wasn't an avid tweeter, having tweeted only a handful of times.
He was also hired by Ali Rowghani, who stepped down from the
company in June as the chief operating officer.
The latest change comes a day after two key Twitter employees
announced they were leaving the company on good terms. Jeremy
Gordon, Twitter's vice president of engineering on the consumer
side, and Adam Kinney, a senior manager who worked on Twitter's
internal analytics, both said they were moving on while thanking
Twitter.
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