Twitter loses commerce exec, disbands unit

SAN FRANCISCO — Nathan Hubbard, the executive in charge of Twitter's commerce initiative, is leaving  as the company abandons work on a "buy" button and disbands its commerce team.

Twitter confirmed a report in Recode of Hubbard's departure. Hubbard, former CEO of Ticketmaster, was Twitter's head of media and commerce.

The news comes a day after BuzzFeed reported that Twitter had dialed back its commerce efforts, just as the stock sank to a near all-time low. Recode says the commerce group was disbanded in October.

Twitter is still helping businesses sell stuff on Twitter with customer service tools and ads featuring products browsed on a retailer's website but no longer has a commerce team.

"We made a change 3 months ago to INCREASE our investment in commerce by moving fully into Dynamic Product Ads after seeing the great early results," Twitter spokesman Will Stickney said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. "We have more product, engineering and business focus on commerce as a result of focusing on DPAs."

Also leaving Twitter is Jana Messerschmidt, who handled the company's relationships with outside partners, including Google.

The departures are the most significant since four vice presidents left in early January and spotlight the intensifying debate over the future of the company, which brought back co-founder Jack Dorsey nearly a year ago as CEO to reverse its financials — an eroding stock price and stagnant user growth — neither of which he has been able to do.