Satya Patel joined Twitter in March of 2011, after a four-year stint as an investor with Battery Ventures. He took on the big job of managing the company’s core product as well as its growing advertising business. But now, as its ads business is starting to take off, he’s leaving the company.
The decision was amicable, I’ve heard from a source familiar with the matter. Twitter’s executive leadership is looking to separate the ads and product teams more fully, with each one getting a new leader. Patel’s options were to take one of those roles instead of continuing to run both.
“Satya has done a great job building out an amazingly talented product team,” a spokesperson tells me today, in confirmation “We’re grateful for everything he’s done and wish him the best.”
What’s happening with Twitter’s ad business? It’s reportedly on track to generate $1 billion in revenues by 2014, well ahead of third-party predictions.
Meanwhile, the product continues to get more popular across the web and mobile. It is seeing around 400 million tweets per day now, versus 340 million around a month ago, chief executive Dick Costolo said at an Economist conference in San Francisco today. Overall, its mobile usage and mobile revenue are starting to beat out its web counterparts.
Patel is an experienced product manager. He held senior positions at DoubleClick for three years, then held similar product management roles at Google for another four after the search giant bought the ad network. Along with the other departed product leaders over the last few years, he can take credit for helping Twitter take flight not just as a beloved social communication channel, but as a business.