Was really hoping to talk to Twitter employees about this later this week, but want to set the record straight now: pic.twitter.com/PcpRyTzOlW — Jack (@jack) January 25, 2016

Updated January 27 @ 9:32 GMT: It turns out that Twitter's head of product Kevin Weil isn't actually taking some "well-deserved time off"—he's joining Instagram, one of Twitter's main competitors, as their head of product.

Original story

Late on Sunday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed that four of the company's top executives will be departing. Additionally, the head of Vine—Twitter's short-form video sharing service—is also leaving the company, to rejoin Google. The exodus, it would seem, has begun.

The four executives departing Twitter are: Kevin Weil (head of product); Katie Jacobs Stanton (head of media); Alex Roetter (head of engineering); and Skip Schipper (head of HR). According to Dorsey, the four will be taking some "well-deserved time off." According to Recode, some of the departures were by choice, while some were asked to resign.

Stanton, among other things, says she'll be taking some time off to help raise her kids and help Hilary Clinton become president. Weil seems to be following a similar route, tweeting that he'll be spending more time with his wife and kid, and "some long trail runs." Roetter is "taking a step back" to think about what's next for himself and his family. Adam Bain (COO) and Adam Messinger (CTO) will take over some of the duties of the outgoing executives in the interim.

Jason Toff, the head of Vine, also tweeted that he was leaving the company—but rather than take some time off, he's heading back to Google to work on virtual reality stuff.

Dorsey's tweet—which amusingly used an image to circumvent the service's contentious 140-character limit—was very light on details, mostly framing the departures as a matter of course. "Like, you know, they've been here for a few years, so it's cool for them to leave."

In reality, of course, it's pretty unusual for five department/division heads to all announce that they're leaving on the same evening. The departures are almost certainly related to Twitter's tumbling share value: Twitter's ($TWTR) shares, after a year of trending downwards, are now trading at just $17.84, an all-time low and less than half the company's original share price ($44.94 after its first day of trading).

Since becoming CEO of Twitter in mid-2015, Dorsey has toyed with a number of ideas that might buoy investor confidence, and thus the company's share prices. In October he fired about 8 percent of Twitter's workforce, and he's also tried to push out new features, such as Twitter Moments, that might drive new user growth. And now Dorsey has five top positions that need filling. Hold on tight: a lot more changes are coming to Twitter this year.