• Twitter Nabs Google's Lead Android Evangelist. Next Target: Students

    Mg Siegler

    MG Siegler is a general partner at Google Ventures and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. Previously, MG was a general partner at CrunchFund. And before TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked... → Learn More

    Friday, July 23rd, 2010

    After a bit of a slow start, the Android app ecosystem is now growing at a rapid clip, as it nears 100,000 apps. One of the people Google can thank for that is Sun Hu Kim, their lead for Android developer marketing. But come Monday, he won’t be pitching Android anymore, he’ll be pitching Twitter.

    Twitter has hired the longtime Google employee (he’s been there just about 4 years) to be a part of Twitter’s fast-growing platform team, the company has confirmed. Kim tweeted about the news a few minutes ago, as well.

    Twitter didn’t have any more to say about what he’ll specifically be doing for the company now, but you can bet he’ll be playing to his strengths as a marketing manager. As he notes on his LinkedIn profile, at Google his job was “Encouraging developers from around the world to build apps for Android.” Now he’ll likely be doing the same thing for Twitter.

    You may recall that Twitter worked closely with the Android team to make their native Android app. Earlier this year, the head of Android’s core library moved on to the mobile payment startup, Square — a company founded by Twitter chairman (and creator) Jack Dorsey.

    In other Twitter recruitment news, earlier today, Twitter’s Join The Flock account (the account they use for recruiting purposes) tweeted that they would soon being recruiting for new employees on college campuses.

    Twitter University Recruiting is coming…need a Twitter-y name for it, suggestions?,” reads the tweet. Twitter is growing fast, but employee growth can’t seem to keep pace with user (and usage) growth, as they made pretty in their post talking about the recent scaling issues. There are over 20 engineering positions they are actively looking to fill — on top of several other ones.

    University recruitment is a huge area of emphasis for larger companies like Microsoft, Google, and even Facebook. You’ll soon be able to add Twitter to that list.

    Update: Jokes Twitter’s Ryan Sarver, the Director of the Platform team Kim will be joining, “he’ll be working on the twPhone :) ” iPhone killer watch take 600!

    Company: Twitter
    Website: twitter.com
    Launch Date: March 21, 2006
    Funding: $1.16B

    Created in 2006, Twitter is a global real-time communications platform with 400 million monthly visitors to twitter.com, more than 200 million monthly active users around the world. We see a billion tweets every 2.5 days on every conceivable topic. World leaders, major athletes, star performers, news organizations and entertainment outlets are among the millions of active Twitter accounts through which users can truly get the pulse of the planet.

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    Product: Android
    Website: code.google.com
    Company Google

    Android is a software platform for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in Java that utilizes Google-developed software libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code. The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards...

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