Twitter has hired Google Maps director Daniel Graf for the position of their new vice president of consumer products,
Daniel Graf, Google Maps director, will be replacing Michael Sippey, who led Twitter's consumer product for the better part of two years before leaving the company in January. Graf made the announcement of his new role from his Twitter account, Tuesday. The latest move comes in wake of the company's struggle to create a cohesive consumer product strategy. Graf led efforts on the company's Google Maps project since 2012, making him a suitable candidate for the job. He also had a key role in the development of Google Maps for iPhone devices after Apple introduced its competing maps product.
Followed Maps to find that the flock was just around the corner - excited to take wing with the @twitter product team...
— Daniel Graf (@danielgraf) April 15, 2014
Graf also spent six years of his career as the CEO of Kyte, prior to Google. Graf departed from the company after it was acquired by KIT digital in 2011. Under his new role at Twitter, Graf will be reporting to Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani, Wall Street Journal reported.
Previous reports revealed that Twitter has been having trouble getting new users to come back and use the social networking site. The biggest obstacle they face is beginners have difficulty in navigating and using Twitter services. In the fourth quarter of last year, Twitter reported having 241 million active users. It was an addition of only one million U.S. users and 8 million users globally from the last quarter, accounting for a mere 3.9 percent increase. If this carries on for the new few quarters, it will take Twitter 11 more years to reach Facebook's reported 1.23 billion users. A previous report suggested that more than 44 percent of Twitter users have never sent out even a single tweet.
Hiring Graf seems to have been a good move. After Graf took over as vice president of consumer products, the micro-blogging company's stock have soared the most since its first day of trading, jumping 11 percent to $45.52 on April 15, 2014.
"Twitter has had some issues with user retention and 2014 is going to be the big test for them," said Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner Inc, according to Bloomberg. "Google Maps has done really, really well. When you have someone of Daniel's caliber maybe you can solve some of these problems."
It will be interesting to watch Graf's impact on Twitter's product development team, which has had several leaders over the company's short history.
