Twitter's revenue guru and chief nice guy is out
Twitter's Chief Operating Officer Adam Bain is leaving the company after six years, he announced via a tweetstorm Wednesday.
Bain is credited with helping grow Twitter's entire revenue strategy, a.k.a its advertising business. He arrived at Twitter, coming from Fox Interactive Media, back in September 2012 as the president of global revenue and partnerships.
Back then, Twitter was generating $0 in sales. By the end of the following year, he brought in $106 million in revenue and nearly tripled that amount in 2012.
You May Also Like
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Bain was promoted to chief operating officer in October of last year after cofounder Jack Dorsey returned as CEO. Bain was reportedly also up for the top position.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
On Wednesday, Bain did not reveal where he is headed next, but he described it as "totally different and new outside the company. Stay tuned!" Twitter appointed Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto as the new COO. He will serve as CFO as well until a new one is appointed.
That's quite a lot of responsibility for Noto, who will oversee Twitter's live video business as well as advertising sales, data, revenue product and MoPub.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
It's a huge change and a big blow for the struggling tech company, which has had its market value severely shrink over the last two years. Twitter was interested in a sale last month, with Salesforce, Google and Disney circling, but it failed to close a deal before its deadline of Oct. 27.
Since then, Twitter laid off 9 percent of its workforce, or more than 300 employees, and announced a plan to shut down the standalone six-second-video app Vine. Those cost-cutting measures along with a high-level executive departure could make way for another deal.
Twitter set a goal to reach profitability by 2017. Dorsey said in a statement that Twitter is still working to achieve that goal.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Bain was highly respected by Twitter's investors, in the partnership community and by his colleagues, as Recode's Kara Swisher wrote in a story published during Twitter's CEO search last summer. The piece inspired the Twitter hashtag #AdamBainIsSoNice, which was resurrected after the announcement.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Topics X/Twitter
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
