Twitter keeps facing an executive exodus and the latest one to leave the company is Kathy Chen, who was in charge of China operations.
Chen is now departing the company after just eight months, following in the footsteps of Twitter COO Adam Bain, CTO Adam Messinger and others. In fact, Chen is now the fifth executive to leave the company in recent months.
Twitter got Chen on board back in April 2016 as its managing director of Greater China, based out of the company's Hong Kong office. Chen has announced her departure over the weekend but mentioned that Twitter's Hong Kong office will remain active.
7/12 Now that the Twitter APAC team is working directly with Chinese advertisers, this is the right time for me to leave the company.
— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016
Chen posted a series of tweets on Dec. 31, announcing her decision to leave the company and expressing her gratitude for the opportunity, noting that Twitter is a "fantastic platform" for expression and keeping up with current events.
Kathy Chen's Controversial Appointment
Appointing Chen as its first Greater China MD proved to be a controversial decision for Twitter, as people started raising concerns regarding Chen's previous employment and government association.
Quartz, for instance, reported that Chen was a former Communist Party engineer who worked on military security, researching missile defense for seven years at the People's Liberation Army. Chen was also the CEO of a company suspected of conducting surveillance operations for China's Ministry of Public Security.
Twitter Blocked In China
Twitter is still banned in China, as are many other social networks including Facebook. Nevertheless, Chinese users still access Twitter, Facebook, and other blocked social networks through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Despite being blocked in the country, Twitter still serves Chinese advertisers seeking to reach a global audience.
Chen was in charge of that but the company's reorganization in Asia has now put Twitter's Asia team in charge of Chinese clients. With this in mind, Twitter has no direct replacement for Chen but will continue its operations with the new scheme in place.
In her lengthy tweetstorm announcing her departure, Chen also mentioned that over the past couple of years, Twitter has increased its revenue from Chinese ad partners by nearly 400 percent.
After deciding to leave the company, Chen said she plans on taking some time off and then "pursue more international business opportunities."
Twitter Shakeup
Twitter, for its part, is having a substantial shakeup at a global level, not just in China. Back in October, the company announced that it was cutting its global workforce in a bid to keep costs down, axing roughly 350 jobs. Things don't seem to have improved a lot since then and Twitter, while still a widely popular social network, is still having trouble turning profits.
With Twitter bleeding executives at a global scale, it may prove even more challenging to return to profitability. Nevertheless, the company seems keen on improving its services and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey even asked the social network's millions of users what features they would most like to see Twitter implement this year.
An edit button for editing tweets was the most highly requested feature, as expected, but users also called for increased security, a bookmarking option, and other features. It remains to be seen how things will pan out, but Twitter is making efforts to get out of its rut.
