Yahoo Finance Lastminute.com Founder Joins Twitter Board
Martha Lane Fox, who co-founded the popular travel website lastminute.com, has been announced as the newest member of Twitter (Xetra: A1W6XZ - news) 's board of directors.
The entrepreneur will join the company effective immediately following the news that Hollywood executive Peter Chernin and tech investor Peter Currie will both step down.
She (Munich: SOQ.MU - news) sold her own website to Sabre Holdings in 2005 for £577m, before setting up an organisation to advance the understanding of internet enabled technology, called doteveryone.com.
Commenting on her appointment on her personal Twitter account, Ms Lane Fox said it was the "best job ever".
She joins at a time when Twitter, which has just celebrated its 10th birthday , is facing difficulties in an increasingly crowded market.
The social media platform has struggled to monetise its user base since it burst on to the technology scene in 2006 and is facing the issue of a decline in the growth of its user base, having added no new users in the fourth quarter of last year.
Twitter has also been criticised for the lack of diversity among its management - Ms Lane Fox herself has previously spoken out about it, suggesting that the company would have made more progress on the problem of trolling if more women were involved in designing the site.
Following the statement announcing Ms Lane Fox's appointment, Twitter's co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey addressed the problem of representation head-on, saying the board was making efforts to rectify the disparities.
She will be just the second woman ever to sit on Twitter’s board of directors.
Ms Lane Fox is already a board member of several other major companies including Marks & Spencer (Other OTC: MAKSF - news) , mydeco.com and British broadcaster Channel 4.
She was appointed as a cross-bench peer to the House of Lords in 2013.
In the same announcement Twitter also revealed that Hugh Johnson, the vice chairman and chief financial officer of PepsiCo (LSE: 0QOS.L - news) , would be joining the Board in a similar capacity to Ms Lane Fox.
Twitter is expected to next report financial results later this month.
The company’s share price is up 1.12% following the news.
