Head Of Communications Sean Garrett Leaves Twitter
Twitter Head of Communications Sean Garrett (@SG) has just announced that he's leaving Twitter in a series of tweets. When asked to confirm his departure, Twitter Communications Representative Carolyn Penner said, “I think his tweets speak for themselves...”
Context & Ripple Effects
Sean Garrett, Twitter's head of communications, announced his departure in a series of tweets, with company representative Carolyn Penner offering only that "his tweets speak for themselves." The exit lands in the middle of Twitter's busiest stretch of the year: within the past week the company rolled out new Activity and @USERNAME streams that turn the home page into a dashboard, debuted 'Top News' and 'Top People' search, and launched Music Trends.
That product surge sits on top of the growth story CEO Dick Costolo told at the Web 2.0 Summit in October 2011 — iOS 5 integration tripling signup rates and daily volume climbing from 100 million to 250 million tweets — alongside Twitter's stated position that it will stay simple rather than enter a feature race, and its pending dominion over the word 'tweet' from the Twittad settlement.
First-order effects
- Twitter's communications function is suddenly headless at the exact moment it is explaining its most visible homepage redesign of the year, leaving Penner as the de facto public voice while the Activity and @USERNAME streams reach users.
Second-order effects
- Whoever replaces Garrett inherits a messaging tightrope: reconciling Costolo's October 2011 'stay simple' pledge with a run of dashboard-style feature launches, while also stewarding the 'tweet' trademark claim secured in the Twittad settlement.
Third-order effects
- As Costolo's signup and tweet-volume figures become the company's headline metrics, the communications role at Twitter shifts from product announcement logistics toward controlling a growth narrative — making the seat harder to fill and more exposed each time it turns over.
The trend: Hypergrowth consumer platforms like Twitter are turning communications leadership into a high-churn, strategically loaded seat as the story shifts from features to scale.