The rumour mill has been flying for months as to who will be next person to head up operations for Twitter Canada. We broke the story when they were first looking to open an office in Canada, and we also broke the story when Kirstine Stewart was hired to run Twitter Canada. On many levels she was a very surprising choice as someone who came from the television world (CBC) to run an 100% digital property. If you look it, most Canadian offices of a US brand such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, even Yahoo are only sales arms and no product is created in Canada. Last week Dick Costello stepped down as CEO and Co-Founder, Jack Dorsey was appointed Interim CEO. Jack had previously served as CEO from 2007 to 2008 before management ousted him. The news of Jack’s return instantly gave Twitter stock a 5 – 7% stock bump, we can’t help but be reminded when a similar situation occurred with Steve Jobs and his return to Apple back in 1998.
Twitter is under fire as advertisers want more, many advertisers we have reached out to have said they are spending more money on rival platforms such as Facebook and Google, as they can get a “better bang for their buck” with more users, higher attention rates and more data as to how advertisers can target specific consumers sets. Looking at the numbers Facebook has over 1.4 billion, WhatsApp over 800 million and Twitter is somewhere around 302 million. Perhaps there is an untapped magic formula that Jack Dorsey will be able to uncover, either way who ever takes over for Kirstine Stewart here in Canada will also have a tough job. Back in 2012, Twitter was that shiny new kid on the street that everyone wanted to play with, but now with so many competitors Twitter Canada will need to do more to earn advertisers dollars and brand’s attention.
Back in April, Dick mentioned that Twitter was forced to cut advertising rates for direct response ads after they failed to deliver as the company had promised. That led the company to cut its revenue forecast for the year as it anticipated making $4 million to $5 million less each quarter.
Who could be next to run Twitter Canada? Perhaps Bruce Neve, he stepped down from his CEO post at Starcom MediaVest Canada back in April of this year, or perhaps Darrell MacMullin, Former Managing Director of PayPal Canada who was once rumoured to originally run Twitter Canada.