The most senior executives at Twitter barely tweet themselves and one has only ever sent four tweets, web developer who analysed their activity finds.
Most of Twitter’s senior executives did not use the social network before they joined the company and barely use it now, new analysis has found.
The typical executive at Twitter has tweeted less than once per day since they joined the social network, and two have sent less than one tweet a month, according to analysis by Si Dawson, a web developer from Wellington, New Zealand.
Dawson found the use of Twitter by the company’s own senior staff varies from Katie Jacobs Stanton, the vice president of global media, who joined the site in December 2009 and has tweeted 19,600 times (an average of 9 tweets per day), down to Brian Schipper, the vice president of human resources, who joined in January 2014 and has tweeted just four times ever.
Dawson, who has been on Twitter since 2008 (and himself has sent an average of 24 tweets a day since then), poses the question “How can they understand their business if they never use their product?”.
He told the Guardian: “In the software world it’s called ‘eating your own dogfood’. It’s critical.”
But not tweeting does not necessarily mean the company’s executive team are not heavy users of their own service. The latest statistics from the company reveal that 40% of active users – defined as people who logged in at least once a month – don’t tweet, instead using the service to read content coming from others.
Judging whether someone is getting value out of the service purely by looking at how much they tweet is potentially misleading. And so too is assuming that there’s a “correct” number of tweets per day; Twitter’s advice to celebrities joining the service is to tweet when they have something to say, rather than trying to hit a pre-set figure. Twitter’s executives may just be following their own advice.
Twitter declined to comment.
How much do they tweet? (averages rounded to integers)
Katie Jacobs Stanton, vice president, global media: 9 tweets per day
Kevin Weil, vice president of product: 5 tweets per day
Dick Costolo, chief executive officer: 3 tweets per day
Adam Bain, president of global revenue & partnerships: 2 tweets per day
Adam Messinger, chief technology officer: 0 tweets per day
Gabriel Stricker, chief communications officer: 0 tweets per day
Alex Roetter, senior vice president of engineering: 0 tweets per day
Vijaya Gadde, general counsel: 0 tweets per day
Anthony Noto, chief financial officer: 0 tweets per day
Gordon Lee, controller & interim chief accounting officer: 0 tweets per day
Brian “Skip” Schipper, vice president of human resources: 0 tweets per day
This is originally published in The Guardian.com
