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Twitter ( TWTR ) has hired a new exec to head up its China division as it looks to court local businesses for advertising, even though the government has banned the social media service from operating on China’s mainland since 2009. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the appointment of Managing Director for China Kathy Chen in a tweet late Thursday. “A big welcome to Twitter, @KathyChen2016! She joins us as our MD for China!” Jack Dorsey’s post said. In response Chen tweeted, “We have many ways to connect China to the world.” San Francisco-based Twitter opened an office in Hong Kong a year ago to court Chinese companies wanting to advertise their products and services to its millions of users around the globe. The microblogging service has seen 340% growth in its number of Chinese advertisers since then, according to a report in the South China Morning Post quoting Shailesh Rao, Twitter vice president for Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Emerging Markets. Major Chinese advertisers for Twitter include brands such as Lenovo Group and Huawei Technologies, as well as China media outlets like the state-owned Xinhua news agency and People’s Daily, the report said. “Because of the success we’ve seen, we want to expand the investment we’re making” in the region, said Rao. Twitter China Chief Worked At Microsoft, Cisco Chen is a veteran information technology executive who previously worked at Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Cisco Systems ( CSCO ). She will take over from Peter Greenberger, the former director of emerging markets, Greater China and Russia. Greenberger is now the Asia-Pacific head of global brands and agencies at Twitter, according to the report. Twitter got a price-target cut Thursday from investment bank Morgan Stanley , citing falling user engagement and shrinking user growth at the social media site. Morgan Stanley also trimmed its projections for Twitter’s user growth. Twitter will end this year with 307.1 million global users, the investment bank now says, down from its original projection of 310.6 million. The amount of time that each user spends on the site is also declining, said Morgan Stanley, with those lower engagement levels holding back revenue growth. In Q4, Twitter’s U.S. mobile users averaged just 2.7 minutes daily on the site, said Nowak, compared to 40.5 mobile minutes for music streaming service Pandora Media ( P ), 30.3 minutes for Facebook ( FB ) and eight minutes for YouTube, owned by Alphabet ( GOOGL ) subsidiary Google. The figures are based on research from ComScore and Morgan Stanley. Twitter will capture a 1.4% share of net digital ad spending this year, up marginally from a 1.3% share in 2014, according to a March survey from eMarketer. Google ranks first, with a 30.9% share of net digital ad spending; Facebook ranks second, with a 12.0% share of the total market, which eMarketer estimated will reach $186.8 billion market in 2016. Twitter stock was up 1% in midday trading on the stock market today , near 18. Alphabet stock was up a fraction, while Facebook stock was down a fraction. Scalper1 News
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