Twitter has a revolving door problem. Shares of the company were down Tuesday following a report that Jeff Seibert, Twitter’s head of core consumer product since last fall, has relinquished the job in order to return to leading the app developer platform Fabric. According to Recode, Twitter has appointed senior engineering director Ed Ho as a temporary replacement as it searches for a permanent hire.
Seibert had been leading Fabric until he was promoted by CEO Jack Dorsey last September. Adam Messinger will continue to oversee product development, having taken over from Kevin Weil, who departed for Instagram. Other recent moves at the company include the exits of head of commerce Nathan Hubbard (here’s his tweetstorm explainer on that) and head of biz dev Jana Messerschmidt.
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A Twitter spokesperson said in a statement that the company had settled on five product priorities this year: the core Twitter service, live-streaming video, creators, safety and developers. “We’ve successfully increased our shipping cadence on our core service and have asked some of our top leaders to take on key roles in the other priority areas,” the rep said.
Outgoing Twitter Exec Nathan Hubbard Explains Departure in Tweetstorm
Twitter has struggled even as rivals like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat continue to see growth, especially in the coveted daily active users (DAU) metric. Wall Street continues to respond with each bit of news, and on Tuesday shares dropped roughly 2 percent to $15.00. Two years ago, shares hit a high of $69.
SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Robert Peck wrote on Tuesday that the executive changes were “particularly disconcerting” and noted that “if the current trend of meager user and engagement growth remains, we think it’s inevitable that Twitter will need to pursue M&A (mergers/acquisitions) alternatives as has been discussed in the media for some time.”
Peck said likely buyers, if Twitter went down that road, would likely include Google, Facebook and Apple. Yahoo’s name has also been floated as a possible suitor, but they have their own problems…
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article erred by referring to Seibert’s position as “head of product,” when in fact he was the head of Twitter’s core consumer product.