Twitter Elevates Periscope Co-Founder Kayvon Beykpour to Head of Product

By Janko Rottgers

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Twitter announced a reshuffling of its product leadership Thursday: The company is evelating its GM of video Kayvon Beykpour to the head of product role. Former VP of product and engineering Ed Ho will stay on in a part-time role, focused on security. Engineering will now be led by Mike Montano.

CEO Jack Dorsey announced the leadership change internally in an email, which he subsequently shared publicly on Twitter . In it, Dorsey said that the new structure would help the company to be more agile, help with decision-making processes, and “foster stronger culture.”

Ho, who had been with Twitter since April of 2014, took a temporary leave of absence in May, and subsequently had a death in the family that prompted him to opt for a longer leave. “I know that I’ll never regret spending more time with my family over everything else,” he said on Twitter Thursday .

Going forward, Ho will work for Twitter one day a week, and possibly return at a later date to lead a skunkworks project, according to Dorsey’s email to staff.

Beykpour’s new role is just the latest step in an ascent that started with the acquisition of his live streaming startup Periscope in 2015. While Periscope was at first separated from Twitter’s professional video efforts, all of the company’s video initiatives were united under Beykpour’s leadership in early 2017 .

Having Beykpour in charge of all of Twitter’s product can also be seen as a vote of confidence for the company’s video initiatives. On Twitter,  Beykpour said Thursday that he was excited about more closely aligning Twitter’s video product and its curation efforts with the core Twitter product.