Vijaya Gadde, who has led Twitter’s corporate affairs for the past two years, has been named general counsel at the company, after corporate counsel Alex MacGillivray announced on his personal Web site Aug. 30 that he is leaving the position as Twitter gets ready to go for an expected initial public offering in 2014.

Gadde specialized in corporate and securities law at the Silicon Valley firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati for 10 years, before leaving to work at computer routing company Juniper Networks. The Indian American joined Twitter in July 2011.

Civil libertarians have praised MacGillivray, who worked at Google before joining Twitter, for championing the rights of users and rebuffing requests for information about its users, The New York Times reported. The company fought a court order in 2011 to reveal names of WikiLeaks supporters and told users that their information was being sought.

MacGillivray — better known as Amac — said he would continue in an advisory role.

On his personal blog, he wrote, “I’m looking forward to engaging my various Internet passions from new and different perspectives, seeing friends and family without distraction, and just goofing off a bit. We should all do more of that.”

According to the Times, Gadde said she is “honored to work with the @twitter legal and @safety teams as we continue to defend our users around the world.”

The Times also reported that Twitter has boosted efforts to increase revenues by recruiting senior marketing executive Kate Jhaveri from Facebook.

Analysts said that Twitter would face a key challenge to balance business interests and its advocacy of free speech.

The company’s public policy department will now report directly to chief executive Dick Costolo, rather than to the new general counsel, as it had in the past, a company spokesman said.

Source: IndiaWest