Is anyone hearing a popping sound? This week saw the departures of two higher-ups at Twitter, COO Ali Rowghani and media unit head Chloe Sladden. As Recode notes, Sladden's departure is not unexpected given the larger reorganization that appears to be happening. Meanwhile, the company's stock price is almost in the toilet, now at $32, less than half of its post-IPO high of $73.

The reason for Rowghani's departure appears to be a demotion of sorts that followed on some lackluster growth. Per Recode:

Twitter announced in 2012 that it had more than 200 million active users — who are people who used the service at least once a month. Soon after, [CEO Dick] Costolo told employees he expected to get to 400 million users by the end of 2013. Twitter ended 2013 with 240 million users and [they only hit] 255 million at the end of the first quarter of 2014.

The departure of these two executives follows on the announcement the May departure of Senior Vice President of Engineering Christopher Fry; the departure, the same month of Creative Director Doug Bowman; and the January departure of VP of Product, Michael Sippey.

And, of course, both Rowghani and Sladden announced their departures via tweet.

Update: Twitter's communications guy Jim Prosser reached out to SFist to suggest that "top" might be a stretch for some of those who left, though as Mashable pointed out, the departures were primarily people who had been with the company since its early days. Also, he would like everyone to know that Twitter's stock price has been on the rise since early Friday. And yes, it looks to be closing at $38 as of Monday.

[Recode]
[Mashable]
[SF Gate]
[NYT]
[BusinessWeek]