Snapchat has hired a new growth lead from Facebook as it continues its trek to becoming one of the most valuable social networking companies in the world.
Anthony Pompliano, a product manager that led growth and engagement for Facebook pages, has joined the company to lead Snapchat’s growth team, he said in a tweet earlier today. Snapchat confirmed the hire, saying Pompliano will be on the business operations team working on growth and engagement. He will be reporting to Brian Theisen.
https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/639097166405853184
These roles become increasingly important as a company needs to begin to devise its growth strategy. In particular, as companies begin to expand internationally, continued growth often requires a different strategy due to different cultural values and demographics.
And of course, these roles can help create new strategies and tools for accelerating growth in general. Snapchat, for example, added a tool earlier this year that lets users add other friends by scanning QR codes. Tools like these can give users easier ways to add new friends. The company’s last-reported valuation was somewhere north of $20 billion.
Snapchat has definitely been busy on the product front. In August, it launched a “travel mode” that doesn’t load snaps automatically and requiring users to tap on a snap to load — saving data for users that aren’t looking to load every snap right away. And in July, it removed the need to hold down on snaps in order to view them, all of these basically making the app more lightweight.