Rogers is moving to the US to become the social media site’s first ever data editor and leaves the Guardian newspaper after joining in 1998. He became the editor of the datablog and datastore in 2009 and was closely involved in the Guardian’s exercise to crowd source 450,000 MP expenses records and the organisation’s coverage of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wikileaks war logs.

Writing on his blog Rogers said: “Twitter has become such an important element in the way we work as journalists. It’s impossible to ignore, and increasingly at the heart of every major event, from politics to sport and entertainment. As data editor, I’ll be helping to explain how this phenomenon works.”

Rogers will be replaced by James Ball, currently data journalist at the Guardian, who will also be in charge of embedding data journalism in the Guardian newsroom more widely.

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger said: “Simon has done an amazing job over the last decade helping to build the Guardian’s reputation as a world leader in data journalism and it will be fascinating to see what he can do with the vast trove of data that he will have access to at Twitter.”

• Simon Rogers was a keynote speaker at MRS Annual Conference in March. Click here for our write-up.