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Dorsey confirmed the departures of four top executives in a tweet late Sunday night: Alex Roetter, Twitter’s head of engineering; Kevin Weil, head of product; Katie Jacobs Stanton, vice president of global media; and Brian "Skip" Schipper, vice president of human resources.
"I'm personally grateful to each of them for everything they've contributed to Twitter," Dorsey wrote in a tweet.
Stepping in for the departing executives are two of Dorsey's top lieutenants. Twitter's chief technology officer Adam Messinger will be taking over all of engineering and product, Dorsey said. Twitter's chief operating officer Adam Bain will take on additional responsibilities, overseeing the media and human resources teams on an interim basis, Dorsey also announced.
Of Messinger, Dorsey wrote: "He has a very strong sense of how to bring our development together so we can continue to ship faster and produce stronger work that people will love to use. And I will be partnering with him day and night to make sure we're building the right experiences."
Three of the departing executives, Roetter, Weil and Stanton, confirmed their departures on Twitter.
Twitter spokeswoman Natalie Miyake declined to comment.
The head of Twitter's Vine unit, Jason Toff, also announced he was leaving the company on Twitter Sunday night. Toff said in a tweet that he is joining Google to work on virtual reality.
Twitter plans to announce two new board members, including a high-profile media personality, and a new chief marketing officer, according to two people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The management upheaval was first reported by technology news service Re/code.
Dorsey, who took over as interim CEO in July 2015 and was appointed CEO in October 2015, is trying to revive the company he co-founded in 2006.
He put Twitter's product team on notice during his first quarterly earnings call with analysts in July when, as interim CEO, he called the failure to grow the popularity of Twitter "unacceptable."
Stifel Research downgraded Twitter to a "hold" rating on Sunday after news of the management shake-up leaked.
"While we may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, we don’t see how the departure of the heads of three major business divisions can be viewed as a positive in the middle of an attempted business turnaround," Stifel analyst Scott W. Devitt wrote in a research report.
Twitter (TWTR) shares have lost more than half their value this year, falling to $17.84, far below the company's $26 November 2013 initial public offering price, as investors have grown increasingly uneasy about slowing user growth and the company's prospects of gaining more mainstream traction. Twitter reports fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 10.
In the third quarter, monthly active users rose more slowly than expected to 320 million. Excluding "fast followers," who are SMS users, Twitter had 307 million monthly active users. Both figures were below Wall Street consensus. Facebook has about five times as many users as Twitter.
Dorsey has taken steps to stabilize Twitter since taking over as CEO, overseeing a wave of layoffs to reduce costs and sharpen product focus, naming Google's former business chief Omid Kordestani as Twitter’s executive chairman and working on new features to make Twitter easier and more intuitive to use, such as "Moments." Executives are also considering increasing Twitter's 140-character limit to 10,000.
The management shake-up follows years of instability at the company. Twitter's advertising business, led by chief operating officer Adam Bain, has performed well. But user growth has stalled as rivals such as Facebook, Facebook-owned services Instagram and WhatsApp and Snapchat all race ahead.
Those rivals continue to introduce features that mimic Twitter. Last week, Facebook took aim at one of Twitter's core strengths with the unveiling of Sports Stadium, a destination for live scores, stats and commentary during games.
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