Twitter, the suffering micro-blogging platform, might finally come to know what direction its products should take to stay relevant. The company has today acquired a not-so-popular social networking company – ‘Yes, Inc.’ to onboard a new VP of Product.
Yes, Twitter had been missing the one person to guide the company what to do next – like not closing Vine – since June. But the founder and CEO of the bought startup, Keith Coleman, has now been appointed as the vice president of product, effective Monday. Meanwhile, the position was currently being held by Ed Ho, the VP of engineering.
I’m excited to announce our team is joining Twitter. Can’t wait to work with @jack, @adam_messinger & team! First day is Monday – let’s go!
— Keith Coleman (@kcoleman) December 1, 2016
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also quoted the company’s CTO Adam Messinger to welcome Coleman on board for this next phase of his journey.
Yes! Keith and team are joining Twitter to help lead and strengthen our service! https://t.co/5aFouFxTsh
— ??jack (@jack) December 1, 2016
Yes, Inc. is a relatively unknown social networking company, which has been operational for a good two years. It runs two apps, namely Frenzy and WYD (what you doing!?). Frenzy is a lightweight mobile app used for making and sharing plans with friends on the go. Whereas WYD can be seen as another Snapchat (or Facebook) competitor which allows users to layer their photos and videos with emojis before sending it to their friends.
Before launching Yes, Inc. in 2014, Coleman used to work at Google and lead product management for Gmail. He has over a decade worth of experience in building products (from scratch as well). The team at Yes Inc. have a ton of experience building widely-used products like Android, PayPal, and others. They’ll now be working from Twitter offices with design and product roles.
Commenting on the future of the company’s social apps, the official statement on Yes, Inc.’s website reads:
In the coming weeks, we’ll be shutting down our apps so that we can focus entirely on our new efforts. We are sad to see them go, but excited about the future ?
Yes, both of Yes, Inc.’s apps will be shut down in the coming weeks. And it’ll definitely be interesting to see how Twitter uses the company’s prowess in building social experiences to better their ecosystem. The micro-blogging might also be looking to follow in the footsteps of its arch-enemy Facebook to bake some Snapchat-like features into their own platform. It has already started including features copied from the said social app into its acquired products – Instagram and possibly WhatsApp. But the company isn’t stopping there and is building upon the same to better the service.
