Twitter's chief technology officer Adam Messinger is leaving the company

He is the second C-level executive to leave Twitter in the last month without an immediate replacement.
 By 
Kerry Flynn
 on 
Twitter's chief technology officer Adam Messinger is leaving the company
Adam Messinger, chief technology officer of Twitter Inc., exits JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters in New York, U.S., on Friday, Oct. 25, 2013. Credit: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Twitter's Chief Technology Officer Adam Messinger is leaving the company after five years, the executive publicly announced Tuesday via a tweet. He is the second C-level executive to leave in the last month without an immediate replacement.

Additionally, Twitter VP of product Josh McFarland announced his upcoming departure. The leader will leave early next year to join venture capital firm Greylock Partners, TechCrunch reported.

Messinger, an experienced engineer, has served as CTO since 2013, prior to when Twitter was public, and has had a significant amount of responsibility, especially during the company's tumultuous past year.


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When four senior executives (including the VP of product and VP of engineering) left Twitter in January, Messinger was put in charge of engineering, consumer product, design and research, user services and Twitter's mobile app development platform Fabric.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said at the time Messinger and himself would work "day and night to make sure we're building the right experiences."

Messinger joined Twitter in 2011 as the vice president of platform development, where he managed Twitter's engineering teams from various acquisitions and also introduced a new patent system, Wired reported. Prior to Twitter, he worked at software company Oracle.

McFarland served as a VP of product for the last nine months. He joined Twitter through the acquisition of his ad tech company TellApart.

Their departures come at a difficult time for Twitter as it continues to disappoint investors with its inability to invigorate the product enough to attract more users and reach profitability. Just last month, Chief Operating Officer Adam Bain left the company. Earlier this year, the company was a failed acquisition target from the likes of Google, Salesforce and Disney.

Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto has taken over as COO. He is simultaneously serving as CFO until a new one is appointed.

With Messinger's departure, the heads of product, design and engineering will now report directly to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the New York Times reported.

Messinger has no plans to move to a competitive social network such as Facebook or Snapchat, according to the Times.

Twitter's current goal is to reach profitability. In October, the company introduced several cost-cutting measures, including layoffs and discontinuing six-second-video app Vine.

“I’ll be working even closer with our engineering and design teams to ensure we continue to be the fastest and best service to show what’s happening in the world,” Dorsey said in a statement.

Topics X/Twitter

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Kerry Flynn

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.

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