Twitter’s Australian news and government manager Flip Prior among the global job cuts
Flip Prior
Twitter Australia news and government partnerships manager Flip Prior is among the victim of job cuts at the social media company as it looks to shed up to 336 positions from its global workforce.
Prior tweeted: “Sad to say my days at Twitter are coming to an end due to global events”.
It led to a series of replies expressing surprise, including one from ABC presenter Mark Colvin who, in a direct tweet to Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, said: “@flipprior built Twitter’s brand in Australia the way no-one else could have”.
Prior, who was communications and partnerships manager for the Walkleys before joining Twitter last September, was responsible for helping media organisations and parts of government get to grips with the social platform and helping them integrate the medium into their operations.
Prior declined to comment beyond her tweet.
It is unclear how many other jobs have gone locally as Twitter looks to axe eight per cent of its workforce globally.
Twitter Australia declined to comment, directing enquiries to the official announcement made to the US Securities Exchange on Monday.
Most of the job cuts are expected to come from products and engineering departments.
Dorsey tweeted earlier this week that while the decision to make redundancies was “tough”, it was also necessary to “enable Twitter to move with greater focus and reinvest in our growth”.
In a letter to staff, he added: “We feel strongly that engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce. And the rest of the organisation will be streamlined in parallel.”
The job losses come as Twitter struggles to grow its user base. It has around 300 million users, far less than both Instagram and Facebook which has more than 1.4 billion users.
Steve Jones
A shame to see this news. Flip was a really great twitter representative and will be missed.
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I really liked Flip and I don’t doubt her enthusiasm and commitment to the job.
I must say, though, that I’ve always found Twitter AU’s approach to working with media brands always ended with a “now what?” that they could never clearly answer.
Flip is a talented person and will be snapped up in no time, I’m sure. But I think this is emblematic of the wider problems Twitter faces, and at present they’re not offering much in the way of a solution.
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Thought they would be hiring not firing?
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