Twitter announced Monday that it has made two key new hires to bolster its senior management team: Pam Kramer joins as the company’s first vice president of consumer marketing and Joel Lunenfeld joins director of global brand strategy. (via VentureBeat)
Kramer most recently served as general manager at GreenRoad, which offers programs for fleets to reduce driving risks and save on fuel costs. Before that, she worked for three and a half years at Zoomerang and for nearly nine years at E*TRADE, in both positions as chief marketing officer. With over a decade’s worth of experience in leading marketing for companies private and public, small and large, Kramer’s skills will be put to the test at Twitter.
She also currently serves as an advisor at Lending Club, the personal loan and investing site.
The other new team member, Lunenfeld, hails from Moxie Interactive, a digital advertising company. He led Moxie as CEO for nearly a decade. Before that, Lunenfeld held other lower-level positions at Moxie as well as media manager positions at 360i, a digital agency, and Xceed, provider of data and software components
“Pam and Joel are significant hires whose experience and leadership will help strengthen the way we talk to both consumers and major brands about Twitter around the world,” said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. “I’m thrilled to have them join our already strong senior management team.”
By hiring Kramer and Lunenfeld, Twitter is aiming for more mainstream adoption of its microblogging platform. While it is definitely seen as one of the most influential social sites next to Facebook, with 200 million members, it still has a long way to go before “tweets,” “hashtags” and the rest are understood and accepted by a wider slice of the Internet audience.
From a wider perspective, the move to strengthen relationships with users (and potential users) parallels similar moves to improve ties with the media and developers.
The new hires join Twitter just a few days after four product managers–Kevin Cheng, Josh Elman, Anamitra Banerji and Jean-Paul Cozzatti–were let go by the company, a decision directed by Jack Dorsey, head of product. Dorsey also serves as CEO of Square.
