Twitter Reshuffles Top Executives, Appoints New COO and CFO
Former Zynga VP rises to CFO rank in just two months.
Social media startup and looming Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) rival Twitter has shaken up its top executive positions, announcing the changes on Twitter throughout Thursday evening.
The current Chief Financial Officer Ali Rowghani, who previously filled the same role at Walt Disney Company’s (NYSE: DIS) Pixar animation studios, will be moving to the top operating role and COO. Mike Gupta, a former treasurer for the social game developer Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA) will be replacing Rowghani as the company’s new CFO.
Rowghani first tipped off the tech blogoshphere when he, naturally, updated his personal Twitter profile to reflect the new position. But Twitter’s chief executive Dick Costolo confirmed the news in a tweet Wednesday evening.
“Congratulations to @rowghani [Ali Rowghani] on his new role as COO and to @mgupta [Mike Gupta] on his new role as CFO,” Costolo’s tweet said.
According to the tech blog AllThingsD, Rowghani’s was already focused primarily on operational responsibilities rather than strictly financial ones, so at least as far as the company is concerned, the switch in his title could be a change in name only.
Mike Gupta, meanwhile, has only been at Twitter for two months. He first joined the company after leaving his roles as treasurer and senior vice president of Zynga in mid-November, one of the last in a long line of high-profile departures for the struggling game developer. Previously, Gupta served as a treasurer and senior VP with Zynga. Before that, Gupta spent eight years working in various finance roles at Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO).
Professional qualifications aside, Gupta has not put his company’s core product to much personal use. His Twitter profile is over two years old according to the Twitter tracking service myTwitterage, but he only began tweeting on Wednesday—presumably after his new role had been finalized to everyone but the most public elements of Twitter.
“I can’t stay off the grid forever,” he wrote in his third-ever message on the social network.
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