
Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down - doctorshady
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/technology/twittters-chief-operating-officer-Ali-Rowghani-resigns.html
======
djloche
Here is the takeway:

"Mr. Rowghani has been selling Twitter shares heavily since May, when insiders
were first allowed to sell after the company’s initial public offering in
November.

Last month, he sold 300,000 shares, worth about $10 million. And this month,
he sold nearly 75,000 shares worth more than $2.5 million. He remains a major
stockholder, however, owning about two million shares, according to his latest
regulatory filing."

This is a non-story. This is a guy that had a mountain of net-worth 'on paper'
and since he is now legally able to, he's brought a portion of that net-worth
into the bank.

I don't know about you, but if I had 50MM+ on paper in a single investment,
I'd want to take at least a fifth of it and turn it into cash for investing
elsewhere, building that dream home, going on vacation, etc.

Now, maybe he's filthy rich already, but this just strikes me as a very
typical, sane 'diversify your assets' type of situation.

~~~
nrao123
"There was, in fact, a question at a recent “tea time” — bi-weekly employee
meetings with top execs — about Rowghani’s large sale of his shares. Those in
attendance told me that Rowghani got up and told the audience that he was not
thrilled to answer the question, but noted that he wanted the money to give to
research to battle a disease that took his father’s life. It was an emotional
address, said those present." [http://recode.net/2014/06/11/twitter-mulling-
shake-up-of-top...](http://recode.net/2014/06/11/twitter-mulling-shake-up-of-
top-execs-including-coo-ali-rowghani/)

~~~
friendcomputer
I wonder why he didn't donate the shares directly, isn't that simpler for tax
reasons?

------
rmason
I adore Twitter but I am afraid the company is executing poorly. Here are a
few examples:

1\. I receive daily emails on my main account urging me to advertise. Or more
properly I don't see them because I've marked them as spam.

2\. Created an account for an event that never got used. Receive two emails
every single day trying to get me to engage. You would think after over a year
that they'd get the message I wasn't going to use the account but the emails
still come every single day.

3\. Clicked on Twitter's own ad to find out more information about promoted
accounts. The ad promises more information but instead an ad console loads
slowly, very slowly. Is there any information as to cost? None, so I go to
Google. The top link which is a blog says it will cost me $4 for each follower
I gain. I click on the Twitter company link which is lower down the page and
it tells me it will cost me as low as 30 cents a follower. Anyone at Twitter
HQ noticing that their funnel is badly broken? I'm guessing very few small
businesses are using this successfully and signing up.

Since Twitter went public the most innovative single thing on the platform was
by an independent developer and that's Dave Winer's Little Pork Chop.

I am still hoping that Twitter turns itself around but the clock is ticking.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "1\. I receive daily emails on my main account urging me to advertise. Or
more properly I don't see them because I've marked them as spam."

Me too! I used their ad service once and despite telling them not to send
anymore emails I get bombarded with marketing emails every single day.

~~~
rmason
Yeah, makes you wonder if they've heard of A/B testing. I will bet you the
Twitter execs don't like being spammed but have no conscience about doing it
to others.

------
tlrobinson
> It was up about 4 percent in midday trading Thursday.

It's got to be somewhat depressing to know the market thinks your presence at
a company is worth almost negative $1 billion.

~~~
tg3
I was going to say that his VORP [1] was -$1b, but since they won't be
replacing him, I think your original assessment is correct.

And extraordinarily depressing.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_over_replacement_player](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_over_replacement_player)

------
yalogin
Whats going on with Twitter? The stock is significantly down and they seem to
be going through re-orgs frequently. Have they become stagnant? Its not going
to go away but I don't know what else they can do to increase revenue or
increase adoption.

~~~
ForHackernews
Honestly, I've never understood the appeal of Twitter. Maybe many other people
feel similarly?

I read somewhere that the vast majority of Twitter accounts are bots or
completely inactive.

~~~
salgernon
I'm with you there. Every time I've tried to engage, it felt like a million
conversations that had nothing to do with me and for which I had nothing to
contribute.

What is frustrating to me though: as an outsider that is not logged in to
twitter, is that visiting the site _almost_ forces you to log in before you
can find anything. If you know you can go to twitter.com/search/ then fine,
but you won't find that link on their home page.

For that matter, the twitter home page doesn't even tell you what it is, I
guess at this point we're just supposed to know.

~~~
frostmatthew
> For that matter, the twitter home page doesn't even tell you what it is, I
> guess at this point we're just supposed to know.

Well it does say _" Start a conversation, explore your interests, and be in
the know."_ so it does give _some_ indication. But yeah I'm guessing not many
people are landing on their home page having no clue what Twitter is.

------
valarauca1
>Twitter had 255 million monthly users in March, a 5 percent increase from the
previous quarter. It was the second quarter of disappointing growth for the
service, and Wall Street was hoping for an increase in the double digits.

Growing at a rate of 12.5 million users per quarter is slow?

~~~
dmcy22
Not a direct comparison, but when Whatsapp is adding 1 million users a day
[1], 12.5 million per quarter doesn't seem like that much.

[1]
[http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/20/technology/social/whatsapp-1...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/20/technology/social/whatsapp-19-billion/)

~~~
rco8786
You're comparing signups to active users. Very different.

------
numair
I'm sorry, but you can't blame a talented operations guy (among the most
talented in our industry -- he led the Pixar IPO) for Twitter's failure to
innovate and grow. Especially when you factor in the constant absence of the
guy who is supposed to be in charge of product, who spends more of his time
tending to his overhyped payments company.

The lack of a transformational acquisition probably didn't make him very happy
either, as it's hard to see how Twitter's current product mix moves the needle
in any meaningful capacity.

Twitter's loss.

~~~
far33d
Nitpick - Ali wasn't at Pixar @ the time of the IPO, though I'm sure he was
instrumental during the Disney acquisition.

~~~
numair
Thanks, my bad. Just annoyed that anyone thinks this about cashing out, rather
than actual problems at Twitter right now.

I'm not hating; I hope Twitter figures itself out. We need a strong #2 in this
space.

------
andrewljohnson
I'm curious how many of Twitter users are real and how that plays into
regulatory filings. There are an awful lot of fake accounts on Twitter.

Not to say I don't like Twitter a lot. I use it everyday to follow news and
conversations.

------
mantrax5
Reminds me of Forstall who dumped all his Apple stock months before being
fired.

Why should they dump their stock before being fired? Is there a reason not to
wait a little bit? It just looks plenty passive-aggressive.

Unless, of course they believe the stock will take a nosedive shortly after
(which never happens).

~~~
therobot24
absolve ties?

~~~
gvr
Yeah, Jobs did the same thing. There are plenty of people that feel they want
to get that psychological tumor out of their lives after being fired and I
think it's understandable even if it's not entirely rational in all cases. I'd
probably do the same myself.

------
lowglow
Oh god. The SECRETS I wish I could tell everyone about Twitter!

~~~
lsh123
Just tell it to HN. We promise not to tell "everyone" :) :) :) :) :)

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msie
Thank goodness Twitter is failing. They've turned their backs on developers
using their API.

