coo

Twitter shuffles top execs, names new COO and CFO

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo confirmed via tweet today that the massive social network is now being headed by a new chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

Ali Rowghani moves into the COO position from his previous post of CFO at Twitter. Rowghani has been with the social network since 2010, when he joined the company after serving as CFO for the Disney-owned Pixar Animation Studios. According to AllThingsD, Rowghani is known for multi-tasking at the social network and contributing to Twitter's Promoted Suite of ad products.

Mike Gupta moved into Rowghani's former position after working as the … Read more

Zynga COO leaves game maker after reorganization

Zynga Chief Operating Officer John Schappert has resigned his executive position and left the troubled social-game maker's board, the company revealed today in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Schappert, who joined the San Francisco-based game maker in May 2011, was replaced as head of the games division in a corporate restructuring last week.

"We can confirm that John Schappert has left Zynga and its board of directors effective immediately," Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in a statement. "John has made significant contributions to the games industry throughout his career and we appreciate all that he … Read more

Zynga slapped with dueling shareholder lawsuits

It's been a dismal week for Zynga. First news of bleak revenue growth in the second quarter followed by plunging stock prices, then accusations of insider trading... and now the gaming company is being slapped with two shareholder lawsuits.

The almost identical lawsuits are being filed by two California law firms seeking class-action status on behalf of stockholders who are accusing Zynga of not warning them about slumping revenue growth before the company's shares plummeted 42 percent last week, according to Reuters.

"Zynga misrepresented or failed to disclose material adverse facts about its business, operations, and growth … Read more

Groupon slashes reported revenue by half, COO exits after 5 months

Groupon, until recently, was the daily-deals darling.

But according to The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago-based company is slashing its reported revenues by half--from $713.4 million in 2010 down to $312.9 million--in accordance with accounting revisions prompted by the SEC. What's more, after only five months on the job, Groupon's second COO of the year has quit.

Groupon was recently compelled to change its accounting practices after discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Valued at $20 billion, Groupon was on track to move forward with a $750 million IPO, but in June it was … Read more

TouchPal gives Android an enhanced soft keyboard

Though the T-Mobile G1 offered only a physical keyboard at launch, the release of the Android 1.5 "Cupcake" update brought a virtual keyboard to the first Google Android handset. What's more, Google included its own soft keyboard, but also released an input method engine API so developers could create keyboards. Here's one of my favorites.

TouchPal is a new virtual keyboard for Android offered by CooTek. It stands apart from the default version by offering many new enhancements and shortcuts and three keyboard layouts (QWERTY, compact QWERTY, and T9). ToucPalm also supports four languages with … Read more