Twitter hires Current TV strategist for media role

Sloan, who was a vice-president of strategy at Current TV, has been hired by Chloe Sladden, who is another former executive at the TV network headed by the one time US vice-president, Al Gore.

Sladden is director of media partnerships at Twitter and ex-vice president, special programming projects at Current TV, and worked with Sloan on the channel's 2008 presidential elections coverage, which saw it partner closely with Twitter.

A year into her job at Twitter, Sladden has brought Sloan on board to help the micro-blogging service press ahead with development of its media partnership plans.

Media partnerships are one of main planks, along with advertising and paid-for corporate accounts, of Twitter's strategy to generate revenues.

On his blog, Sloan wrote: "I'm going to be working on media partnerships with my friend and erst­while colleague @ChloeS. This couldn't be cooler: it's every­thing at the intersec­tion of Twitter and media, from live events on TV to citizen journalism on the web.

There are few details available about how he will work with media groups, but Sloan added he would work with Sladden and "producers, reporters, developers and strategists at media organizations that want to do cool, transformative things with tweets.

"You don't need me to tell you that Twitter is fun and useful. Got it.'

He added: "Twitter media partnership work ahead: there will be a place to talk about that, too. When it's ready, I'll point you to it."

One of the first comments posted on Sloan's blog was from Jennifer Preston, social media editor at 'The New York Times'.

"Congratulations and welcome to the Twitter media mad­ness. I look for­ward to working with you and Chloe, who is amazing. Lots of territory to explore," Preston said.

Media organisations have been some of the biggest adopters of Twitter, with accounts such as 'The New York Times' attracting huge followings. The paper's @nytimes has in excess of 2.3 million followers, making it the biggest newspaper on Twitter.

Its huge following puts it close to other big Twitter news players such as CNN's @cnnbrk and MSNBC's @breakingnews, which attract in excess of 2.8 million and 1.6 million followers respectively.