Twitter announces Karen Stocks as first Australian MD
Social media platform Twitter has announced the appointment of Karen Stocks as its Australian country manager.
The appointment comes as Twitter officially confirmed the opening of its Australian office, a move first reported by Mumbrella in January.
“Karen has been hired to run our business in Australia”, Shaliesh Rao Twitter’s vice president of emerging markets, Asia Pacific and Latin America, told Mumbrella.
“She brings a wealth of relevant experience to Twitter. Karen, in her time at Google, has had exposure to mobile business, thought a lot about the social business and has worked a lot with the YouTube and online sales business in Australia,” he said.
“What it means for us is a continuation of a strong commitment to the Australian market. It is extremely important to us and can be a source of innovation and business growth.”
Stocks joins Twitter from Google, where she was previously the managing director for mobile and social solutions for the APAC region. In that role, she oversaw the Google’s commercialisation and sales strategy for all countries in the Asia Pacific.
In 2011 while at Google, Stocks was interviewed by Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes:
The company also said it was continuing to hire and would be making further additions to its sales and partnership teams, after announcing the appointments of Jono Simpson and Danny Keens earlier this year.
The company declined to comment the number of Twitter users in Australia but said the new appointments was a sign of confidence in the market.
“Part of what we’re signalling with the appointment of Danny and with Karen is a confidence in the relevance of the Twitter platform to the broad base ofAustralians. This is backed up that there has been sustained growth in our usage in Australia across the country and we expect that to continue.”
Nic Christensen
and if they are looking for a good market researcher….
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So there’s an IPO in the wings and the new head quarters taking shape. Twitter reported has some 2 million user (probably not all active). Are they actually looking at growth opportunities in Australia? About a year ago that they were being pushed by the government to have some sort of presence. Now they supposedly signalling there intention to get stuck into the Australian market. What a leap in 12 months. They do have a handle/ account that was launched in Oct 2012 but we are the only country that does not have its own extension (yet). Albeit all other countries do redirect to the .com at present from their own. Maybe more users here may feel part by the micro blogging service when Australians sense deeper engagement from Twitters platform.
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