TROUBLE AT TWITTER: COO Could Be Out Because Of Slow Growth
This time, the executive turmoil is centered on Ali Rowghani, the COO who was supposed to be in charge of growing Twitter, and improving its products.
Twitter's user growth has been weak, and the stock has been hammered as a result. How weak? Facebook is adding more users on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Apple, which sells $600+ devices, added almost 3X as many new users in Q4 and Q1 combined as Twitter.
As a result, Rowghani is being stripped of his power to oversee product, says Swisher. She also hints that this could be the start of a push to move Rowghani out of the company. There is an evaluation at Twitter about whether or not it needs a COO.
Rowghani has made missteps beyond failing to grow.
He sold 300,000 shares of Twitter for $9.9 million when the lockup period ended. The rest of Twitter's major executives and investors committed to holding their shares, but Rowghani sold. Swisher says employees asked about this at an all-hands meeting and Rowghani said he wanted to give money to group doing research to battle a disease that killed his father.
Another thing that bothered people at Twitter was that Rowghani had a glowing profile in the Wall Street Journal just before Twitter's most recent earnings report. In that profile, an anonymous employee called Rowghani the "co-CEO". Swisher says top management and board members didn't care much for this description, and thought it was inaccurate.
Neither of those things would be all that bad if Twitter was growing, but it's not. That's been his responsibility for over a year.
Rowghani had been Twitter's CFO, and he successfully led the company's IPO. He is currently leading global business development, international growth/strategy, and North American media, says Swisher.
Twitter has a history of executive turmoil. Jack Dorsey was the original CEO, then he was forced out of the company so Evan Williams could take over. Then Williams was forced out so Costolo could take over. Costolo has been CEO since 2010.