Twitter fires product, revenue heads as it seeks to become “responsible and efficient”

Social media platform Twitter, which is undergoing a transition phase at the moment, has asked its erstwhile head of consumer product and the general manager of revenue to leave the company. Confirmations of the move via social media posts, as well as a company statement reported widely, state that Twitter’s (now ex-) head of consumer product, Kavyon Beykpour, and the general manager (GM) of revenue and head of business product, Bruce Falck, were asked to leave the company by their chief executive, Parag Agrawal.

Explaining the changes in a statement, a Twitter spokesperson said, “We can confirm that Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck are leaving Twitter. Jay Sullivan is the new GM of Bluebird and interim GM of Goldbird. Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business critical roles. We are pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient.”

Twitter is presently going through a transition phase, after Tesla and SpaceX chief, Elon Musk, executed a takeover bid on Twitter worth $44 billion. After signing the move, Musk stated that he would make a number of changes geared towards improving free speech on the platform, and make Twitter’s content recommendation algorithms open-source – among other changes.

However, the takeover bid is now under scrutiny by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission. Musk is expected to take charge of the platform, once the deal is cleared by all regulatory authorities.

In an internal statement announcing the move to its employees, Twitter’s heads including Agrawal, and board member and Salesforce co-chief Bret Taylor, had announced after disclosure of the sale that Twitter was entering a “transition phase”.

Beykpour, who was the co-founder of live streaming service Periscope, joined Twitter after the latter took over his company in 2015. The executive took over a role in Twitter’s hierarchy, and gradually became the head of Twitter’s consumer products as the company reshuffled its head executives.

In a post announcing his departure, Beykpour said that through his time since Q2 2018, Twitter’s daily active users (DAUs) have increased by 87%. However, he added, “The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision. Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.”