As Re/code reported last week, Twitter sales leader Adam Bain will take over business development at Twitter, while marketing and communications head Gabriel Stricker will head its media unit.
And how did I find out about the changes? Journalismism!
Actually, Bain switched his profile title on Twitter, as did Stricker, to reflect the new duties.
Then, Twitter confirmed the moves to me when I asked. (And the Pulitzer goes to …)
The changes come in the wake of the sudden departure of COO Ali Rowghani last week, which set in motion a very significant management shift. He left the San Francisco social communications company after increasing tensions with CEO Dick Costolo over a number of issues. Those included the loss of the important product organization, after the hiring of former Google exec Daniel Graf. When brought on, he reported directly to Costolo, instead of Rowghani.
Rowghani had purview over business development, now under Jana Messerschmidt, who also runs developer relations. Chloe Sladden, who also left last week, headed North American media under Rowghani, who also had international growth and strategy head Katie Jacobs Stanton under his management.
Now Stricker is her boss, although Stanton is the leading internal candidate to take over all of media on a global basis, said sources. What happens in the media area will be most interesting, because, for the most part, media seems to be something that Twitter had gotten right — at least from the perspective of the media guys.
Twitter has courted TV — and to a lesser extent, other media — quite adroitly, presenting themselves as a partner instead of a competitor. Much of that credit gets assigned, at least, to Sladden. Another chunk of it goes to Bain and his team, for pitching advertising products theoretically designed to augment traditional ads — again, instead of competing with it.
Twitter did stumble this spring with a bone-headed move designed to freeze Facebook out of TV, which ended up making much more work for Twitter’s TV partners. It backed off later.
One interesting area will be in the TV space, for which Twitter initiated a search for a new head of partnerships in the United States in May. You can see the memo on that from SpencerStuart embedded below.
It read in part:
As Twitter grows and continues to evolve its product experience, TV will be a key focus for the company given the high potential to drive user growth. The mission is to make Twitter essential to TV fans.
The Head of TV Partnerships is Twitter’s key liaison to the TV industry and has the responsibility of shaping and driving Twitter's impact on the industry. This executive has the mandate to attract the highesst volume of the best quality TV content to Twittter, and is tasked with making Twitter essential to the business of its TV partners.
That job has largely been done by Fred Graver, who is listed in the memo as the director of creative TV. He is not in line for this new job, although the search is on hold for now under Stricker, sources said.
The move to media to Stricker might seem unusual, but he has been working with Sladden over the last two years on many media efforts, including industry meetings.
Here is the TV partnership memo to peruse:
