Twitter’s China chief quits

Photo credit: @kathychen2016.

Months after Twitter laid off 9 percent of its staff and amidst an exodus of senior executives, the company’s China chief, Kathy Chen, today announced her resignation.

She revealed the move in a twelve-part tweetstorm hours before the start of the new year.

While Twitter has been blocked in mainland China since 2009, the troubled social network is still active in the country in pursuit of Chinese companies who want to advertise globally on Twitter. Major clients include Huawei and state news agency Xinhua.

1/12 Hi everyone, I have some updates to share with you about Twitter's Greater China business.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

2/12 As you know, our focus in Great China is to help Chinese businesses to reach a global audience on our live communications platform.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

3/12 Great China is one of our fastest growing revenue markets in Asia Pacific for Twitter today and we remain committed to this market.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

4/12 We have grown our Greater China advertiser base nearly 400% over the past 2 years and we thank all of them for their support.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

5/12 We have fully transitioned our Chinese ad sales & support activities to our APAC HQ. All Chinese ad queries go to Alan Lan (@bluealan).

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

7/12 Now that the Twitter APAC team is working directly with Chinese advertisers, this is the right time for me to leave the company.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

8/12 I'm proud to have helped build a successful Great China business for Twitter and thank @shaileshrao & @alizaknox for the opportunity.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

9/12 Working at Twitter has opened my mind, my passion is to connect people to the world through cross-cultural communications & businesses.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

10/12 I will take some time off to recharge, study about different cultures and then pursue more international business opportunities.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

11/12 I wish Twitter all the best as it is a fantastic platform for everyone to express themselves & to see what is happening in the world.

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

12/12 Thank you again for all of your support! I wish you a Happy & Prosperous New Year in 2017! #LoveTwitter

— Kathy Chen (@kathychen2016) December 31, 2016

Kathy, Twitter’s managing director for the greater China region, has been the only person at Twitter’s Hong Kong office since October, when the firm moved most of the team to its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore.

Bad year for Twitter

The Hong Kong office, opened early last year, covers mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Kathy was the first Twitter chief for the China area.

“We are not shutting down our HK office,” a spokesperson said in October. But now it’s shut.

Twitter’s icon birdie on a hotel suite window in Shanghai in May 2015 when a Twitter sales exec paid a visit.

Kathy in her resignation tweets hailed the 400 percent growth in advertisers in greater China over the past two years. The area “is one of our fastest growing revenue markets in Asia-Pacific for Twitter today and we remain committed to this market.”

A former exec at Cisco and Microsoft, Kathy’s Twitter appointment in April was controversial due to her involvement with a firm from 1999 to 2005 with apparent links to China’s ministry of public security. According to her own description in a 2004 interview, that company made software used to filter “information of political sensitivity and harmful information.”

She ended her resignation missives with the “LoveTwitter” hashtag.

This post Twitter’s China chief quits appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/twitters-china-chief-quits
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