Twitter gets new CFO as Mike Gupta switches roles

Steven Loeb · July 1, 2014 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/37d6

Gupta will now be SVP of Strategic Investments, is being replaced by Goldman Sachs exec Anthony Noto

I don't know what's going on at Twitter these days, but the company has becoming a revolving door of executives lately.

Only weeks after losing its Chief Operating Officer, as well as its Vice President of Media, the social communications network has now lost Chief Financial Officer Mike Gupta as well, it was revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Well, "lost" may not exactly be the right word, since Gupta is staying with the company. Its just that he will be Senior Vice President of Strategic Investments instead.

Gupta's replacement has already been announced: it will be Anthony Noto, who was previously the Managing Director in the Technology, Media and Telecom Investment Banking Group at Goldman, Sachs. Prior to that he was CFO of the National Football League.

As the company's new CFO, Noto will be paid $250,000. He will also be  getting a one-time stock award for 1,500,00) shares of Twitter common stock vesting over 4 years, as well as a one-time option grant to buy another 500,000 shares.

The two men will be taking on their new roles within the next 30 days.

No official reason has been given for Gupta's move, nor was it revealed whether this idea originated from Gupta or from Twitter. VatorNews has reached out to Twitter to find out more, but the company was unavailable for comment at this time. 

Either way, Gupta is certainly putting a good face on it, as you'd expect he would:

Twitter executives 

Since going public last year, Twitter has not been in the best of shape. The company has seen its stock price drop as a result of slowing user growth. At the same time, it has also seen many of its higher-ups either leave the company, or move positions.

Back in January, former VP of Consumer Product, Michael Sippey, was moved into an advisory position. And last month, engineering SVP Chris Fry departed the company.

This past month, the company lost two key figures: first, it was COO Ali Rowghani who resigned. He was then followed out the door by Chloe Sladden, its VP of Media.

Rowghani's duties were split between two other executives: Adam Bain, who had been head of revenue at the company, was given the addition title of head of business development. And Gabriel Stricker, who had been vice president of marketing and communications, was put in charge of overseeing the entire media team at Twitter.

As investors have been fretting over Twitter's user numbers, the hiring of Noto could be strategic in two ways, as TechCrunch points out: first, his Wall Street experience gives the company an effective spokesperson, and one that can talk the investor's language. Secondly, his experience in the NFL could help Twitter break into the sports world, which would give it a leg up on advertising opportunities.

(Image source: businessinsider.com)

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.