Strategic organisational changes made to create clarity & ownership: Parag Agrawal

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has said that strategic organisational changes focused on creating clarity and ownership have been carried out. This is one of the key decisions he has taken since taking over as CEO of the social media platform.

In his first earnings call as CEO, Agrawal noted that Twitter was now operating under a general management model across consumer, revenue and core technology. The company is also focussing on important data and metrics across the company starting at the top.

"First, I've made strategic organizational changes focused on creating clarity and ownership in the organization. This enables faster decision-making and increased accountability. We're now operating under a GM model, general management model, where cross-functional resources for all product development and the budget to support operations are owned by GM across consumer, revenue and core technology who are responsible for delivering output. Second, we are increasing our attention on important data and metrics across the company starting at the top," Agrawal said during the Q4 earnings conference call.

"This enables not just more accountability but also faster learning. It lets us see how people are using our products, what's working and what is it and why, and with that based on what we can learn. Now, let me turn to what this means for shareholders."

While stating that Twitter's strategy and goals for 2023 are not changing, Agrawal said that the company is increasing its focus on execution. The company has also reallocated funds to deliver growth. The goal is to improve margins or invest in high-value opportunities and make Twitter a large and profitable company over the long term.

"What is changing is an increased focus on execution designed to deliver the outcomes our customers and you all expect from us. Second, we are investing to deliver growth given the massive market opportunity we see. We've done reallocations to fund many incremental investments for 2022, and there is also efficiency work underway that will pay off even more over time," he stated.

Agrawal said Twitter's purpose was to serve the public conversation. "What makes Twitter great is, one, the selection of conversations available on our service, a broad set of people and content on a range of topics that are relevant to the moment," he said.

Talking about personalisation offered by Twitter, Agrawal said users can instantly find relevant content across interest from sports to investing and engage with it. "The strategy and plans we shared with you about a year ago was meant to continue strengthening these two differentiators, around personalization and selection. And we use these to inform and bring completion to our work across both our consumer and revenue focus teams."

Improving personalisation includes developing a better understanding of customer interests through improved machine learning or through building products like followable topics. "It also includes us getting better at matching creators and content to consumers. This enables us to create more relevant and personalized products that increase daily utility and also enables us to serve more relevant ads and can be particularly helpful in improving return on ad spend for performance-oriented advertisers while also improving the ads experience for our customers," the Twitter CEO said.

Twitter has been iterating its new products at a rapid cadence. "I'm talking about spaces, communities, newsletters, professional accounts, creator monetization efforts around super follows and tipping, and also a test with shopping and commerce. All of these come together to enable an ecosystem of products that enable content creators, publishers and businesses of all sizes to build and connect with their audience."

In his first 10 weeks on the job, Agrawal said he has focused on improving our execution using three key groups: increased accountability, faster decision-making and a focus on doing fewer things in pilots.