#TAKE A HIKE, DICK!
New Costolo heat
Tweety bird is getting hammered.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo on Friday continued to get dinged by critics calling for his scalp — the latest salvo coming from Harvard Business School professor Bill George, who berated the 51yearold executive for his lack of leadership.
“It’s time for him to go,” George said on CNBC on Friday. “You need a new team at the top.”
While George praised the Twitter app, which he says he uses five times a day, he said Costolo just isn’t in the same class as Google CEO Larry Page or Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.
George isn’t the first to call for Costolo’s exit.
On Monday, SunTrust analyst Robert Peck said he expected Costolo to be gone within a year.
That idea that Costolo could be headed out the door sent Twitter stock up 3.6 percent. It had been down 41 percent this year, and growth has been slowing.
George, the former CEO of Medtronic, a medical device technology company, unleashed no fewer than eight distinct complaints in an interview lasting mere minutes.
“They’re almost against advertising,” he said. “How long can the Street stay with them with these losses?” he added before following up with a Tweet reading: “Time for new leadership @twitter; otherwise TWTR loses out to Facebook and Google.”
The company pulled in thirdquarter revenue of $361 million, a 114 percent boost yearonyear — but the number of active users isn’t growing as it had been.
And other social media platforms, like Instagram, appear to be stealing Twitter’s buzz.
Monthly active users are at 284 million versus Facebook’s giant 1.35 billion. BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield also noted that Facebook’s Instagram was the most downloaded free app on Friday.
Twitter’s Vine video product ranked No. 20, and Twitter was No. 26, Greenfield noted.
Separately, tech consultant Shelly Palmer told The Post that Twitter needs “a complete revision of its products. What any critical observer would immediately notice is the remarkable disparity between the promotion Twitter receives (on TV) and its lack of a growing user base.”
Street analysts have tipped Twitter Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto as a possible replacement. Former Yahoo! CEO Ross Levinsohn’s name has also surfaced in reports.
Twitter shares closed Friday at $37.60, flat on the session — but they are sitting at just about half of their 52week high of $74.73.
The microblogging site will next report quarterly results on Feb. 5. If subscriber growth doesn’t reignite, the calls for Costolo’s ouster just may get louder.