Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey informed investors on Monday that they have hired a new VP of global communications: Natalie Kerris, who worked at Apple in the past. The confirmation from Dorsey follows a report from Re/code last month that said Kerris was close to being hired at the micro-blogging company.
Kerris appears a perfect fit
About a month ago, Twitter lost several of its top executives, including former communications lead Gabriel Stricker, whom the micro-blogging firm fired about seven months back. Stricker landed at Google-owned Fiber then. He was fired after Dorsey was hired aschief executive officer.
Thereafter, Twitter’s biggest and longtime investor, Chris Sacca, started a talk about the company’s failure at telling its own story to both Wall Street and the press. Now there are two people in place to help the social media firm in reclaiming its narrative. Twitter brought on a new CMO last month: former American Express executive Leslie Berland.
Before taking on her new role, Kerris worked at Apple for 14 years as senior director of worldwide corporate communications. Kerris will report to General Counsel Vijaya Gadde, who has been running communications since Stricker’s departure last summer. A company spokesperson said Kerris will start at the company on Monday.
Twitter continues to struggle
Twitter is an apt company to be labeled as the underdog at this moment. It is facing several issues simultaneously, such as stagnating user growth, a falling stock price and the exodus of top executives.
Dorsey has taken on a number of initiatives to turn it around, and an update to the timeline is included. This update shows users the tweets they are interested in and not the ones that are most recent. The company also tried to do away with the 140-character limit and is considering increasing it to 10,000 characters.
Apart from these big moves, some small moves too have been made to make Twitter’s functioning better. Doing away with weird rules such as the .@name syntax and @reply are included in it since it’s unlikely for new users to understand those. The company also introduced a new feature called Moments, which curates content by aggregating tweets and photos from live events and breaking news situations.
So far, none of these changes has yielded the desired result. Maybe Kerris can work her magic and give the micro-blogging firm a new narrative.
