Twitter brings new blood to board of directors

(MENAFN- AFP) Twitter on Friday added a PepsiCo Inc. executive and a British entrepreneur to its board as chief Jack Dorsey continued an effort to shake-up the stagnating one-to-many messaging service.

In a tweet from his @jack account, Dorsey welcomed to the board PepsiCo chief financial officer Hugh Johnston and Martha Lane Fox, founder of travel website Lastminute.com and member of the House of Lords.

While Lane appeared to be a seasoned Twitter user with 193,000 followers, Johnston fired off his first tweet on Friday.

In his first tweet, Johnston said he was looking forward to being on the Twitter board.

A second tweet from @hughjohnston, sent just a few hours later, was a photo from a season-opening home game of the Mets baseball team in New York.

Fox thanked Twitter chief Dorsey and board executive chairman Omid Kordestani in a Twitter message from account @Marthalanefox, adding "I can't wait. Best. Job. Ever. Watch out silicon valley."

Dorsey and Kordestani followed up with tweets promising that Twitter was intent on making the board more diverse and that more news was on the horizon.

Twitter marked its 10th birthday last month, having become a powerful communication tool but still struggling to win users and reach profitability.

Since making a star-quality entrance a decade ago, Twitter has become a must-have tool for journalists, activists and celebrities but has struggled to show it can expand beyond its devoted "twitterati" to become a mainstream hit.

Twitter's woes include a slump in its stock price to all-time lows this year -- down nearly half from its 2013 stock market debut -- and ongoing losses, even as its revenue grows.

Twitter's base of monthly active users remained stuck at 320 million at the end of 2015. While that is a big accomplishment, Twitter has failed to keep pace with fast-growing rivals and to expand beyond its base.

The troubles forced Twitter to bring back co-founder Jack Dorsey as chief executive, but that has not stemmed rumors about a possible buyout or merger.

Twitter bears the weight of being measured against Internet titans such as Facebook, which is only a few years older but has eclipsed the billion-user mark.

Dorsey said Twitter priorities for this year include making it more intuitive to use; live-streaming video, and making it safer for people to freely express themselves on the platform.