Ex-Palm software head Abbott lands at Twitter

That was fast. Days after a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report filing indicated Palm senior vice president of software and services Michael Abbott's plans to exit the beleaguered device manufacturer, Abbott has already resurfaced, joining microblogging service Twitter in the role of vice president of engineering. Abbott, who led application platform and services development for the webOS smartphone platform, will exit Palm on Apr. 23; prior to joining the company, he served as general manager of Microsoft's .NET Online Services unit.

With Abbott's arrival, Twitter will promote current VP of engineering Greg Pass to the newly created role of chief technology officer. Pass previously served as CTO and co-founder of Summize, the search solutions provider acquired by Twitter in 2008. Search services are central to Twitter's Promoted Tweets effort, the new advertising initiative announced by the company last week.

In an effort to prevent additional defections, Palm will implement a retention program for key employees including executive officers, offering equity awards and cash bonuses to staffers who remain with the firm for two years. The SEC filing indicates senior vice president and CFO Douglas Jeffries and senior vice president of global operations Jeffrey Devine have each received a grant of restricted stock units pursuant to Palm's 2009 Stock Plan as well as a cash bonus of $250,000. Palm is reportedly working with Goldman Sachs and Qatalyst Partners to find a buyer--last week, private equity firm Harbinger Capital Partners announced it purchased a 9.5 percent passive stake in the smartphone maker.

For more on Twitter's executive changes:
- read this TechCrunch article

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