Nomura Securities: 'Twitter Needs Someone That Is Very Product Focussed'

Dick Costolo, will be stepping down as the CEO of Twitter Inc TWTR on July 1, the company announced post the closing bell on Thursday. He would be replaced by Twitter’s co-founder and chairman, Jack Dorsey, on an interim basis.

Nomura Securities' Anthony DiClemente was on CNBC Friday to discuss what kind of person should ideally replace Costolo on a permanent basis.

A Product Person

“I think they need someone that is very product focussed,” DiClemente . “So, if you think about Twitter, you have to think about it first in terms of the user growth, which is somewhat stalled and then in terms of monetization which is decelerating. The question is – can it be a financial person? People are asking this morning, can it be Anthony Noto, the CFO? I think, that it’s more likely, it’s probably most likely to be a product person.”

He continued, “Somebody that can convince the mainstream – what to use Twitter for? How do you keep regular people coming back to Twitter because right now there are a lot of internet properties that are larger than Twitter in terms of number of users, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp. So, more likely a product person, I would think.”

Twitter Is For Big Events

On whether Twitter is losing grounds to other social media apps, DiClemente said, “When Twitter was founded there was a conversational element to the use case where it was real time public tweeting and conversation with celebrities and public figures and things of that nature. I think, messaging apps have sort of taken a bit of the market share of that use case…Twitter has become a kind of broadcast and in a lot of cases one-to-many news broadcasts, it’s for big events…that has value.”