Twitter Canada finally has a new boss. Rory Capern, formerly head of partnerships at Google Canada, has been named managing director.
The role has lain dormant at the 40-person company since 2014 when Kirstine Stewart was made the company’s vice-president of North American media.
In a statement, Matt Derella, VP sales for Twitter for North America, said, “Rory has the right combination of smarts, strategy and deep industry knowledge that our general manager role at Twitter Canada demands. He not only has the resume that makes him an ideal fit but also the personality and ambition that synchs perfectly with our growing office. In short, Rory is a huge addition to our team at Twitter, both in Canada and in the organization overall”.
Capern joins the company as it undergoes a major shift at its from office. Twitter said Monday that four executives are leaving the company.
CEO Jack Dorsey posted a statement to the microblogging service saying that Alex Roetter, Skip Schipper, Katie Stanton and Kevin Weil are exiting the company. Dorsey said he wanted to address employees later this week, but issued a statement due to ‘inaccurate press rumours’ about the departures.
Roetter served as senior vice-president of engineering, Schipper was vice-president of human resources, Stanton was vice-president of social media and Weil was senior vice-president of product.
Dorsey said that chief operating officer Adam Bain would be taking on some additional responsibilities on an interim basis. Chief technology officer Adam Messinger will also be assuming some responsibilities.
After a long streak of robust growth that turned it into one of the internet’s hottest companies, Twitter’s growth has slowed dramatically during the past year-and-half to leave the San Francisco-based company scrambling to catch up with social networking leader Facebook and its 1.5 billion users.
Twitter’s malaise resulted in the departure of Dick Costolo as the company’s CEO last July and ushered in the return of Dorsey, who had been ousted as the company’s leader in 2008.
Dorsey helped invent Twitter in 2006 and imposed a 140-character limit on messages so the service would be easy to use on cellphones that had 160-character limits on texts at that time. Those texting limits on phones faded away several years ago as the advent of smartphones enabled people to use other Internet messaging services. Twitter may be looking to expand beyond its 140 character tweets in a bid to make its service more appealing to wider audience.
Twitter’s stock fell more than 4% in premarket trading Monday.
