Twitter Demotes Product Chief Daniel Graf

By Yoree Koh 

Twitter Inc. has demoted its new head of product, Daniel Graf, just six months after his much-touted hire away from Google Inc.

Kevin Weil, Twitter's current head of revenue products, will now oversee the consumer product team as well, according to securities filing on Thursday. Mr. Weil, a 31-year-old veteran Twitter executive, takes over a team that has been ensnared by management changes as it struggles to figure out how to jump-start user growth.

Mr. Weil becomes Twitter's fifth product head in as many years.

While Mr. Graf's title--vice president of product--won't change, he will no longer lead Twitter's consumer product team, according to a change to his executive bio on the company website.

Going forward, Mr. Graf, who had most recently overseen the Google Maps mobile product, will focus on certain strategic initiatives, starting with geo and location features, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Twitter declined to make Mssrs. Graf and Weil available for comment.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been under pressure to show investors it isn't a niche service for the tech savvy but a must-use service for the mainstream. Twitter has suffered from high user churn rate, with newcomers turned off by the difficulty of finding desired information quickly.

Mr. Graf's demotion comes the same week Twitter said it added 13 million monthly active users in the three months through September, up 4.8%, reaching 284 million users world-wide. While in line with some analysts' expectations, it is a slower pace than the 6.3% it added in the previous quarter. Despite doubling revenue, Wall Street sent the stock down 10% in after-hours trading on Monday.

On Tuesday, Twitter's stock was down about 0.7% to $41.78. The stock is down about 34% so far this year, and has fallen 7% since its first-day closing price in November.

Mr. Weil has risen quickly through the company ranks since he joined in 2009, responsible for building Twitter's revenue business from scratch. Twitter reported on Monday that revenue once again more than doubled in the third quarter to $361 million, surpassing expectations and causing it to raise guidance for the full year.

Mr. Weil was elevated to vice president of revenue products last year and is the youngest executive reporting directly to Mr. Costolo. He has been praised inside the company for executing plans quickly, a feat senior executives hope he can replicate with the troubled consumer product team.

Mr. Graf joined Twitter in April, filling a vacancy left open since his predecessor, Michael Sippey, stepped down in January. Mr. Graf is known as an expert in mobile apps, having overseen the Google Maps mobile product since 2012. But until his hire, he wasn't an avid tweeter, having tweeted only a handful of times.

He was also hired by Ali Rowghani, who stepped down from the company in June as the chief operating officer.

The latest change comes a day after two key Twitter employees announced they were leaving the company on good terms. Jeremy Gordon, Twitter's vice president of engineering on the consumer side, and Adam Kinney, a senior manager who worked on Twitter's internal analytics, both said they were moving on while thanking Twitter.

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