SAN FRANCISCO - The CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo, has replaced almost all of the key executives of the company in recent months and has had trouble finding a way to get more people to use the service.
The head of operations? Gone. The product manager? Out. The senior engineer? I fired.
On Tuesday, Mr. Costolo again turned the revolving door, bringing in Anthony J. Noto, Goldman Sachs banker star who helped sell Twitter shares its initial offering last fall, as the CFO of the company microblogging.
While Mr. Noto is respected on Wall Street, which probably will not be much help with the fundamental problem of Twitter: how to make a niche service, with its quirky acronym RT and MT and the endless stream of messages text of 140 characters, something that appeals to the masses.
Twitter had 255 million monthly users worldwide in March, down 5.8 percent from late December. Analysts had expected to see more than 260 million. Growth late last year was even slower.
That disappointed investors who bought shares after the initial public offering of the company, in the belief that Twitter has the potential to become as big as Facebook, which has five times more users.
"How to convince my mom that she has to use Twitter? Facebook is obvious. Everyone likes to share photos and messages to their friends," said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research. "If you want to reach everyone in the world as Facebook does, the product is going to have to change quite significantly."
Continued instability in the executive suite, a hallmark of the company throughout its eight-year existence, suggests that Twitter is struggling to find its footing as competition stiffens Facebook.
"It's unusual to have this kind of shuffle management and billing as soon for a public company," said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets Internet. "Simply highlight there is still a lot of risk management here. Would not do all these shuffles if they were perfectly jelling".
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Twitter declined to comment beyond its securities filing announcing the leadership change.
One thing Twitter has come good so far: It has become a household name.
The great strength of Twitter is to unite people around events, either to follow updates of news and eyewitness reports during a tragedy like bombing in the Boston Marathon in 2013, or to commune with millions electronically other Super Bowl fans every winter as the game develops.
The company has worked with the media, television networks and advertisers to make their mark everywhere at the time.
The resulting publicity - remember the selfie Ellen DeGeneres tweeted when it hosted the Oscars this spring? - Apply a large influx of new users to check out the service
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