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Kayvon Beykpour, the former CEO of Twitter’s livestreaming service Periscope and its current GM of video, is taking over as Twitter’s top product boss as part of an executive shuffle that was announced internally today.
Ed Ho, the former VP of both product and engineering, has been on leave from the company since May; he is stepping down from his dual role and into a part-time role helping with Twitter’s safety and abuse efforts. The company is splitting his job in two: Beykpour will oversee product and Mike Montano, who has been at Twitter since 2011 and recently oversaw engineering for Twitter’s product team, will take over engineering for the company.
It’s hard to forget the history of Twitter’s top product job. Beykpour is the sixth executive to run Twitter product since early 2014.
The turnover rate has been so high that Vanity Fair once called the job “cursed.” The Verge’s Casey Newton once likened the job to the famed Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship in “Harry Potter,” where there was a new teacher in the role every single year.
The turnover really only matters at Twitter if it derails the company’s existing product plans or vision. Twitter has suffered historically from a lack of executive continuity, meaning that leaders and ideas circulate in and out of the company, making it hard to get anything done. At Facebook, by comparison, top product leader Chris Cox has been at the company more than 12 years.
It’s tough to say if that is the case here — interview requests for Beykpour and CEO Jack Dorsey were declined. But Beykpour has been at Twitter almost four years and is very close with Dorsey, who promoted him to the executive team more than two years ago.
“We’re setting ourselves up for the future,” a company spokesperson told Recode about the changes. “Simplifying how we manage will help us make faster decisions and be more creative and inventive in what we build for the people and businesses who use Twitter.”
It’s possible that Beykpour’s hire is a sign that Twitter wants to emphasize video even more, considering video was his prior focus, and because Beykpour’s video team is joining the broader product team. Or perhaps Dorsey just thinks he’s the best candidate to continue Twitter’s crucial product work.
What’s his vision for where Twitter’s product should go? How should Twitter keep tackling abuse and trolls? Can we get editable tweets?! We’ll keep asking and will update if we hear back from Twitter.
Beykpour will continue to report directly to Dorsey, and Montano will report to Dorsey, too. As part of today’s restructuring, Dorsey now has nine direct reports, all of them with the title of “Lead.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
