Twitter on smartphone. Image: George Dolgikh/Shutterstock
In a year that many people consider to be particularly bad, Twitter has been rocked more than most. Six members of its leadership team have left their roles.
In November, it emerged that Twitter’s COO Adam Bain was leaving the company, a surprising move given the confusing attempts to find a buyer for the micro-blogging site in recent months.
That doubled CFO Anthony Noto’s workload, with his temporary filling of the two roles proving a bit of a problem for the company.
However, what seemed like a ‘bit of a problem’ appears to be part of a growing concern; with the VP of global media (Katie Jacobs Stanton), VP of engineering (Alex Roetter) and VP of human resources (Brian Schipper) also announcing plans to leave their roles throughout 2016.
This week, the company’s CTO Adam Messinger tweeted that he was leaving his position to “take some time off”, while VP of product, Josh McFarland, also revealed he was leaving.
Talking to CNBS, analyst Trip Chowdhry, MD of Global Equities Research, used the latest exits as evidence that Twitter is “toast”.
“Many investors were foolishly building (an) investment thesis based on complete stupidity,” said Chowdhry, who claimed the company’s data quality is “horrible”.
Twitter's 2016 in a nutshell. pic.twitter.com/E43vJ8CXrG
— Seth Fiegerman (@sfiegerman) December 20, 2016
Data is tomorrow’s currency. If investors don’t think a company is on the data train, they won’t buy a ticket.
“The start-up bubble will burst around March-April 2017 and that will cause valuations to collapse, including that of Twitter,” said Chowdhry.
Where does this leave Twitter? Firmly in the hands of Jack Dorsey, a man only recently described as someone losing their control over the company. According to Bloomberg, Dorsey wants to keep Twitter independent, while co-founder Evan Williams is pushing the sale.
When Bain left, it looked like Noto’s prominence in the company would be the talking point in months and years to come.
Now that more are following Bain out the door, it’s impossible to predict what will happen next.
Twitter on smartphone. Image: George Dolgikh/Shutterstock
