Twitter taps Facebook’s former teen-in-residence to lead Gen Z push

Get ready to meet Twitter, Steve Buscemi edition.

In a bid to connect with Gen Z users, the bird app has hired Michael Sayman, Facebook’s former “teen-in-residence” who went on to work at Google and, most recently, Roblox.

Sayman found the public eye as a self-taught teenage app coder. When he was 18, he was hired to Facebook by its co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who proceeded to mentor him. Sayman remained at Facebook from 2014 to 2017, focusing on projects for young users. He left the company shortly after it shuttered his side project, a video app for high schoolers called Lifestage.

Between 2017 and now, Sayman spent time as a product manager at Google, then jumped to gaming platform Roblox. Per his LinkedIn, he managed the teams that built tools for Roblox’s video systems, user profiles, friending, and sharing.

At Twitter, Sayman will be part of the brand-new “0→1 team,” he tweeted.

The team—led by director Haraldur Thorleifsson—will “investigate, explore, and build new ways to serve the future of the public conversation,” Sayman said.

He expanded a bit in conversation with the Washington Post, telling the outlet that “Twitter is a very different product for young adults, and most people are unaware of that.” He added that Twitter thinks young adults are more likely to use its platform to express opinions and have conversations, rather than primarily using it as a news delivery device.

“People in the media look at Twitter as an important news platform,” he said. “That is not how young adults use Twitter at all. Their perception of Twitter is much more varied, encompassing news for some, but not for many others.”

As the Post points out, Twitter is home to niche communities, like fandoms of all sorts and sizes. And though fandom certainly isn’t just for teens and young adults, they tend to be loud and busy members of it: you’d be hard pressed to tap on any mildly attention-grabbing K-pop, Marvel, or Star Wars tweet without seeing dozens of 13- to 17-year-olds in the replies.

Sayman leaned into the geeky image a little, comparing rival TikTok’s user base to high school cool kids.

“The value I’ve seen in Twitter is that there are a lot of young people who use it that feel liberated by the lack of pressure to be super perfect, or have the perfect appearance,” he said. “[T]here are so many other kids out there who feel shy or don’t want to deal with the pressure of showing themselves and having to think about what people think of their braces when they want to talk about what’s going on in the world.”

Sayman is on board, but Twitter isn’t done hiring Gen Z liaisons. According to a tweet from Thorleifsson, the 0→1 team is still actively seeking staffers.