Twitter banks on Nathan Hubbard to head up commerce
The microblogging giant continues to spin its business model as it adds former CEO of Ticketmaster to its executive team.
Twitter has hired former Ticketmaster chief Nathan Hubbard as its new head of commerce, as the microblogging giant continues to push toward enabling e-commerce through the platform.
Hubbard, who left the ticketing company two weeks ago, said in a tweet he was "excited" to join the company, which has more than 200 million active users as of February.
He will report to Twitter's head of global revenue, Adam Bain, reports Bloomberg.
To me, Twitter is a cardiogram of the passion of the live moment. So I'm excited to announce I've joined the flock as Head of Commerce!
-- Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) August 27, 2013
Hubbard's role will involve finding merchants and payment providers to work with, rather than compete with, according to the financial publication. He said he plans to help offer retailers tools for selling products and services within tweets.
From the company's very inception, it was difficult to see how it would make money over the long term. However, over time, Twitter began rolling out sponsored tweets and various advertisements. The social network already serves ads to all US users after it flung open the door to businesses and advertisers earlier this year.
It comes at a time when rumors surrounding a potential Twitter initial public offering once again floated in recent days. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said in April that a public offering was not yet in the cards. In spite of this, the San Francisco-based company is estimated to be worth about $10 billion.
This story originally appeared as "Twitter hires former Ticketmaster chief Nathan Hubbard as new commerce head" on ZDNet.