Skip to main content

The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Join now

Former Facebook and Snap exec Sriram Krishnan is joining Twitter to work on product

Krishnan, who previously worked on ad tech, is trying something new.

Facebook

Twitter has hired Sriram Krishnan, a former ad tech executive from Facebook and Snap, but he won’t be working on ads.

Krishnan, who left Snap earlier this year, just a month before the company’s IPO, is joining Twitter as senior director of product. That means he’ll be responsible for a lot of the core features inside the main app, internally referred to as “Bluebird,” including timeline, direct messaging and search.

Krishnan is a well-known product guy around Silicon Valley, but he has primarily focused on ad tech. At Facebook, he helped build the company’s ad network, Audience Network; at Snap, he helped build out the company’s ads API.

Now he’s taking on a consumer product role — and for a company that has had trouble keeping consumer product execs over the past few years. In an odd twist, Twitter now has a whole mess of them.

Krishnan’s decision to join seems to be a positive sign for Twitter. It at least shows the company still has the cachet and offers enough potential upside to attract someone like Krishnan, who could probably head wherever he wanted, or start his own company. (Krishnan, for what it’s worth, is a Twitter power user.)

The internal pecking order now looks like this: CEO Jack Dorsey has two product folks reporting to him: Kayvon Beykpour, who runs all live video, including Periscope; and Ed Ho, the general manager of all product and engineering at Twitter.

Keith Coleman, who joined Twitter last December as head of product running the company’s core app, reports to Ho. And Krishnan now reports to Coleman, and appears to be taking over at least some of Coleman’s duties.

That crew has their work cut out for them. Twitter, of course, has long been saddled with product issues. Historically, critics have argued the app is too hard to use, and that the sign-up process is confusing and cumbersome, a combination that turns off new users. Those who do figure it out have then dealt with well-chronicled issues of abuse and bullying on the service. Twitter has made solving those abuse issues a key priority over the past year.

Krishnan will start in October. In a series of tweets announcing the new role, he explained that working on a product with Twitter’s impact was just too hard to pass up.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

More in Technology

Technology
The case for AI realismThe case for AI realism
Technology

AI isn’t going to be the end of the world — no matter what this documentary sometimes argues.

By Shayna Korol
Politics
OpenAI’s oddly socialist, wildly hypocritical new economic agendaOpenAI’s oddly socialist, wildly hypocritical new economic agenda
Politics

The AI company released a set of highly progressive policy ideas. There’s just one small problem.

By Eric Levitz
Future Perfect
Human bodies aren’t ready to travel to Mars. Space medicine can help.Human bodies aren’t ready to travel to Mars. Space medicine can help.
Future Perfect

Protecting astronauts in space — and maybe even Mars — will help transform health on Earth.

By Shayna Korol
Podcasts
The importance of space toilets, explainedThe importance of space toilets, explained
Podcast
Podcasts

Houston, we have a plumbing problem.

By Peter Balonon-Rosen and Sean Rameswaram
Technology
What happened when they installed ChatGPT on a nuclear supercomputerWhat happened when they installed ChatGPT on a nuclear supercomputer
Technology

How they’re using AI at the lab that created the atom bomb.

By Joshua Keating
Future Perfect
Humanity’s return to the moon is a deeply religious missionHumanity’s return to the moon is a deeply religious mission
Future Perfect

Space barons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t seem religious. But their quest to colonize outer space is.

By Sigal Samuel