In an effort to turn the struggling company around, Twitter has brought one of the co-founders back to the team. Biz Stone will be rejoining Twitter in an attempt to ‘guide the company culture’ and hopefully attract new users and advertisers. He will not be taking over anybody’s job, but rather the company created a new position in order to fill the void that he left.
Stone has commented on the move saying, “My top focus will be to guide the company culture, that energy, that feeling. This is where Jack, and Twitter’s inestimable CMO, Leslie Berland, feel I can have the most powerful impact. It’s important that everyone understands the whole story of Twitter and each of our roles in that story. I’ll shape the experience internally so it’s also felt outside the company.”
Twitter has been struggling for quite some time now with negative revenue growth and unimpressive growth in number of overall users. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company posted a net loss of $167 million, or 23 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $90 million, or 13 cents a share. Excluding certain expenses, Twitter said it would have earned $119 million, or 16 cents a share, topping forecasts of a profit of 12 cents per share on that basis.
Twitter currently monetizes users at about half the rate of Facebook
Whether this is going to be able to turn the struggling social network around or not will be seen in the coming years. There is also the possibility that Twitter could get taken over by Google or other major companies looking to expand their social presence. Having Stone back in the fold could make the company more valuable to a potential buyer.
