It’s not looking good for the 140-character social network
1. A number of high-profile people have left
This week Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was forced to confront rumours that many members of the management team at the social media company had left.
Head of product Kevin Weil, head of media Katie Jacobs Stanton, head of engineering Alex Roetter and vice president of HR Skip Schipper all announced they were leaving. This is in addition to the exit of Gabriel Stricker, who was in charge of communications for Twitter and left to work for Google’s parent company Alphabet at the end of last year.
This follows other high profile departures in 2015. In fact, the executive team is now down to five executives, from 13 at the start of last year.
Dorsey, one of the co-founders of Twitter, was sacked as CEO last year, but brought back in when a suitable replacement wasn’t found.
Here’s what he tweeted about the management shake-up:
Was really hoping to talk to Twitter employees about this later this week, but want to set the record straight now: pic.twitter.com/PcpRyTzOlW
— Jack (@jack) January 25, 2016
2. Share price is dropping
Twitter’s share price plummeted on the news so many senior staff were leaving. But this isn’t too unusual for the tech company. Since its IPO in 2013, share prices have been slowly falling, partly as a result of the website’s inability to sustain growth.
3. It still doesn’t make money
Twitter is still not profitable and it doesn’t appear as though there are plans to make it profitable. In 2014, it earned $1.4bn but posted a net loss of $577m. The social network has been valued at a reported $22bn – a fraction of rival Facebook’s £167bn.
4. It’s troll central
Despite being nearly a decade old, Twitter still doesn’t have a grasp on trolls. The platform is widely known for being a trolling hotspot, as there is little victims can realistically do to stop harassment. A number of high profile people, such as Sara Payne, mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah, have been driven off the site in the past due to abuse from other users. At the end of last year, Twitter announced plans to make it easier for victims to call out nasty tweets and it said it would introduce measures that help trolls understand the consequences of their behaviour. Former CEO Dick Costolo famously wrote, in a leaked email to staff last year: “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.”
5. Apple or Google could ruin it overnight
Back in November 2013 when it was putting together its IPO, Twitter identified a number of key risks to the company, one of the main ones being its reliability on other companies, such as Apple and Google, to function. It’s not vertically integrated, which means it relies on other companies’ devices, browsers and operating systems. If these companies made changes, this could spell the end for the social network.
“Any changes in such systems, devices or web browsers that degrade the functionality of our products and services or give preferential treatment to competitive products or services could adversely affect usage of our products and services,” the company said.
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