Twitter has recently been taking major steps to beef up its advertising game, including keyword targeting and cookie-based targeting. But what about the next step: actually being able to sell goods directly from the platform?
Twitter has been working on that part of the equation since at least the middle of last year, and on Monday it made a big move in that direction by snagging Philippe Dauman Jr. away from Google to be its director of commerce partnerships. Dauman revealed the news in a tweet sent out on Monday.
Extremely excited to join the flock @Twitter as Director, Commerce Partnerships after 6.5incredible years @Google. http://t.co/umszsaBOeW
— Philippe Dauman Jr. (@pdauman) March 31, 2014
Dauman also updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect the change. His responsibility: “Enabling commerce on Twitter.”
Prior to this position, Dauman had worked at Google since 2007, giving him plenty of experience in the commer space. He started out as a Strategic Partner DevelopmentAssociate for content partnerships, before becoming a Strategic Partner Development Manager. He then moved over to the mobile commerce division, becoming Head of Partnerships for Google Wallet Instant Buy in September 2012.
A Twitter spokesperson has confirmed the hire, and also revealed that Dauman will be reporting to Nathan Hubbard, the former CEO of Ticketmaster, who was hired by Twitter in August of last year as its head of commerce.
Monday is his first day on the job.
Twitter has a number of other positions in the division that it is looking to fill out including Senior ProductManager, Product Marketing Manager and Senior Manager for Partnerships.
The job of the Senior Product Manager is to help “drive the vision and execution of Twitter’s commerce strategy.” That means developing the product roadmap, as well as performing market and competitor analysis and determining product priorities.
(Editor’s Note: Join us for our premier tech and startup competition at Splash Oakland, May 6-7)
The Product Marketing Manager’s job is “to grow awareness and adoption of its advertising products across the world.” That means developing a go-to-market vision, strategy, and success metrics for new features.
Senior Manager for Partnerships will helps incubate Twitter’s commerce business by acting as a strategic partner reporting for the VP of Commerce. The responsibilities including building, and managing, commerce partner relationships with Twitter’s advertising clients.
Twitter obviously has a long way to go before it will truly be able to launch its commerce division, but it already might made one important partnership: earlier this year it was reported that Twitter was close to teaming up with Stripe for in-tweet payments.
The tweet was first spotted by ReCode on Monday.
(Image source: plus.google.com)
