Elliott gets a board seat as part of the deal. The people leading the charge to get rid of Jack Dorsey are more embedded on the inside now.
This looks like a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) for Jack Dorsey. Maybe they're trying to steer him the desired direction. Or maybe they're just trying to gather enough evidence to really oust him in 12 months.
Sorta. This feels more like Jack/activist investor coming to common ground on the direction of the company and also a proper succession plan for Dorsey to walk away from Twitter.
He only owns 2% of the company, and at this point I’d imagine his only options were to strike this truce & have control over how he exits as opposed to be outed right now with a power vacuum causing Twitter to destabilize a bit.
I’d expect to see a succession plan where Jack is out within 12-18 months but getting to help pick the next CEO.
Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. It really is an incredible public utility provided you liberally mute/block/unfollow all the petty fighting and find good people.
Jack seems to understand that. I hope it doesn't devolve into a narrow reveneue maximizing ad-filled trashfire, but thats probably what the hedge fund will push for. I think it would be better off as a non-profit so they can get the paperclip maximizers off their back. Heres hoping Jack wins this one.
> Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies.
Is that really true though? They've been a huge beneficiary of fake news, astroturfing and bots. They've only relatively recently started to do something resembling policing of these things.
That's my biggest concern with Twitters future right now. It already does what it does best, why should new and unnecessary features be added, and like you said Jack seems to understand that. The Investors however think otherwise, since unfortunately the tech industry has adopted the unnecessary change for changes sake for the last decade.
I can already see what such a mentality has done to many other sites, and In the end it drives away the core users of the platform. I can already see this in progress with Reddit for example.
> It really is an incredible public utility provided you liberally mute/bloctk/unfollow all the petty fighting and find good people.
How do you find good people on Twitter? My interests are esoteric and as far as I can tell not represented on Twitter. I've read people assert that most every interest is covered on Twitter, but that's not even close to true as far as I can tell.
> virtually every topic is covered. The connection between butterfly wings and sea snails? Check. The latest trends in space law? Check. In fact, every niche has its Tweeters because of the long tail effect. And if you’re researching something really rare and unique, well, congratulations—you get to be a pioneer as a first online news source on your topic!
I don't see a reason to be a "pioneer" on someone else's platform (with character limits, etc.) when I think publishing a website on my interests would better reach people with the same interests.
Twitter's #1 goal is to generate profit through advertising. You can pay for a slot on the "trending" list. They have custom "emojis" for paying customers' trends. They aren't putting free speech first - they actively suspend accounts for making jokes about their largest advertisers.
Remember the Starbucks / Steve King debacle where Steve King thought that a Starbucks store manager was firing people for saying "Merry Christmas"? Twitter banned the satirist who made the joke, saying he had "impersonated the Starbucks brand" by falsely claiming to be an employee. (https://www.newsweek.com/steve-king-starbucks-merry-christma...)
It isn't a "public utility". It's a privately-owned social media website that operates in whatever way it has to to produce profit for shareholders. The public doesn't own the platform and has zero governance of how it works.
Your ability to mute/block/unfollow accounts does not change this.
Twitter is already a "revenue-maximizing ad-filled trashfire" in every way that matters.
As a user, the people who's opinions I wanted to read posted about day to day matters. And the people who's day to day matters I wanted to read about posted opinions.
As a non-user, I'm affected negatively by all of the crazies that are radicalized on twitter.
If they saturate Twitter with ads I think we could see a new twitter, small team, simple basic ads to pay salaries and keep the app running smooth.
Same with Google Search, someone could just create Classic Search, what Google used to be, a few simple ads and relevant search results.
I think there is an opportunity for new companies to get back to basics (minimal ads + privacy) with lots of sites/services we used to love but have turned in to screens full of ads and selling user data.
It's always been confusing to me what twitter is as a company -- it feels more like a utility, or like the public service part of 20th century journalism without the profit model
In many ways it's more important to society than FB & G (picking them as the 2 of the big 5 that are pure information plays), in that it hosts semi-public conversations and helps experts stay informed
Would be interesting for some small country to create public utility versions of twitter and linkedin and see what the effect is. Sucks for free speech but great for experimental economics and welfare programs.
Network effects are pretty huge for these things. A country could e.g. spin up its own Mastodon instance, but good luck getting people to use it. The country-based LinkedIn might work, since that's inherently local, and lots of countries have some kind of state job advert service tied to their unemployment benefits. It would be a bit nasty to make "you have to be on BritLinkedIn to recieve unemployment benefit" a condition but I can absolutely see someone coming up with that idea.
At the other end of hyperlocal, I've always been surprised that Edinburgh has its own dominant property market website (ESPC).
> In many ways it's more important to society than FB & G (picking them as the 2 of the big 5 that are pure information plays), in that it hosts semi-public conversations and helps experts stay informed.
Out of all interactions on Twitter I've witnessed, conversations comes to mind the least to describe them. It's either people screaming at each other which barely makes it past a scripted dialogue of replies, or it's somebody saying ABC and all their fans saying "wow, so smart/brave/true". I don't see any value in those, and they make up the super majority on twitter.
The "helping experts stay informed" part is true though, there are some small communities where it's used to provide easy methods to contact others. That's a small benefit compared to the giant damage it does to actual dialogue.
Twitter's default mode is a school yard brawl where you have plenty of "followers" egging the fighters on. That's a utility if you want to destroy a society, but important to society?
Using outside investment to buy back shares seems more than a little silly. Seems like acknowledging that the investor made a mistake, since you have no use for additional capital.
Paul Singer is going to find that Twitter isn't as biased as he believed. If anything, it's a wild west situation with respect to TOS violations and gray areas wrt TOS. It's just pathetic that he doesn't want to accept that Twitter, like Google, is trying to Disneyfy their product (making it universally palatable). There's no real leftist bias beyond don't be a jerk (don't use the n word, don't harass lgbt folks, and don't dox). If he thinks there's an actual large scale bias against conservative then I got a bridge to sell him.
Paul Singer, the CEO of Elliot, is extremely partisan and is a top donor to the Republican Party. Seen in this light these moves have caused fear that they are an attack on Twitter to turn it into a right-wing propaganda channel.
I really thought Dorsey would use this opportunity to negotiate a nice exit package. I can't see him (or really anyone) wanting to be Twitter CEO at this point, especially since he also has that Square thing going on.
I don't agree, my guess is he probably wants to be Twitter CEO more than anything else, including even more than being the Square CEO. That's a very influential and potentially history-impacting position.
Hah! This is funny in all sorts of ways. Supposed "activist" investors settling for a quick ransom. Twitter paying the ransom by taking money from possibly worse people. Twitter paying $2 bn in ransom for Jack, the guy who is at best a half-time CEO, and who has presided over a mix of stagnation and deck-chair rearrangement. And of course the online panic that this was going to be a Trump-allied guy's way of dominating Twitter when it was just another cash grab.
In some ways, Jack is the perfect CEO for Twitter. Twitter is a network-effect business. People are on Twitter because people are on Twitter. The main thing to do with those is to not fuck them up. Jack's distraction, disengagement, and dithering are a perfect match for that. Every time something blows up into an actual PR problem, he promises to listen and think and do better, without every promising anything specific.
But for those of us who think Twitter could be something more, this is all just depressing. They could have spent $2 billion on something useful. Heck, they could have just given each active user $7. And they certainly could have got a CEO with vision and some managerial competence.
>And of course the online panic that this was going to be a Trump-allied guy's way of dominating Twitter when it was just another cash grab.
In what way is Elliot "Trump-allied"? He seems like the kind of institutional conservative investor that would hate Trump's attempts at, essentially, implementing a Neo-merchantilist trade and financial policy.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|6 years ago|reply
This looks like a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) for Jack Dorsey. Maybe they're trying to steer him the desired direction. Or maybe they're just trying to gather enough evidence to really oust him in 12 months.
[+] [-] brogrammernot|6 years ago|reply
He only owns 2% of the company, and at this point I’d imagine his only options were to strike this truce & have control over how he exits as opposed to be outed right now with a power vacuum causing Twitter to destabilize a bit.
I’d expect to see a succession plan where Jack is out within 12-18 months but getting to help pick the next CEO.
[+] [-] halibutt|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] zaptheimpaler|6 years ago|reply
Jack seems to understand that. I hope it doesn't devolve into a narrow reveneue maximizing ad-filled trashfire, but thats probably what the hedge fund will push for. I think it would be better off as a non-profit so they can get the paperclip maximizers off their back. Heres hoping Jack wins this one.
[+] [-] smachiz|6 years ago|reply
Is that really true though? They've been a huge beneficiary of fake news, astroturfing and bots. They've only relatively recently started to do something resembling policing of these things.
[+] [-] robotnikman|6 years ago|reply
I can already see what such a mentality has done to many other sites, and In the end it drives away the core users of the platform. I can already see this in progress with Reddit for example.
[+] [-] btrettel|6 years ago|reply
How do you find good people on Twitter? My interests are esoteric and as far as I can tell not represented on Twitter. I've read people assert that most every interest is covered on Twitter, but that's not even close to true as far as I can tell.
https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2012/10/25/social-media-as-s...
> virtually every topic is covered. The connection between butterfly wings and sea snails? Check. The latest trends in space law? Check. In fact, every niche has its Tweeters because of the long tail effect. And if you’re researching something really rare and unique, well, congratulations—you get to be a pioneer as a first online news source on your topic!
I don't see a reason to be a "pioneer" on someone else's platform (with character limits, etc.) when I think publishing a website on my interests would better reach people with the same interests.
[+] [-] RIMR|6 years ago|reply
Twitter's #1 goal is to generate profit through advertising. You can pay for a slot on the "trending" list. They have custom "emojis" for paying customers' trends. They aren't putting free speech first - they actively suspend accounts for making jokes about their largest advertisers.
Remember the Starbucks / Steve King debacle where Steve King thought that a Starbucks store manager was firing people for saying "Merry Christmas"? Twitter banned the satirist who made the joke, saying he had "impersonated the Starbucks brand" by falsely claiming to be an employee. (https://www.newsweek.com/steve-king-starbucks-merry-christma...)
It isn't a "public utility". It's a privately-owned social media website that operates in whatever way it has to to produce profit for shareholders. The public doesn't own the platform and has zero governance of how it works.
Your ability to mute/block/unfollow accounts does not change this.
Twitter is already a "revenue-maximizing ad-filled trashfire" in every way that matters.
[+] [-] im3w1l|6 years ago|reply
As a non-user, I'm affected negatively by all of the crazies that are radicalized on twitter.
[+] [-] saluki|6 years ago|reply
Same with Google Search, someone could just create Classic Search, what Google used to be, a few simple ads and relevant search results.
I think there is an opportunity for new companies to get back to basics (minimal ads + privacy) with lots of sites/services we used to love but have turned in to screens full of ads and selling user data.
[+] [-] annadane|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awinter-py|6 years ago|reply
In many ways it's more important to society than FB & G (picking them as the 2 of the big 5 that are pure information plays), in that it hosts semi-public conversations and helps experts stay informed
Would be interesting for some small country to create public utility versions of twitter and linkedin and see what the effect is. Sucks for free speech but great for experimental economics and welfare programs.
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
At the other end of hyperlocal, I've always been surprised that Edinburgh has its own dominant property market website (ESPC).
[+] [-] luckylion|6 years ago|reply
Out of all interactions on Twitter I've witnessed, conversations comes to mind the least to describe them. It's either people screaming at each other which barely makes it past a scripted dialogue of replies, or it's somebody saying ABC and all their fans saying "wow, so smart/brave/true". I don't see any value in those, and they make up the super majority on twitter.
The "helping experts stay informed" part is true though, there are some small communities where it's used to provide easy methods to contact others. That's a small benefit compared to the giant damage it does to actual dialogue.
Twitter's default mode is a school yard brawl where you have plenty of "followers" egging the fighters on. That's a utility if you want to destroy a society, but important to society?
[+] [-] ForHackernews|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bosswipe|6 years ago|reply
For example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/29/paul-sing...
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[+] [-] predictmktegirl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wpietri|6 years ago|reply
In some ways, Jack is the perfect CEO for Twitter. Twitter is a network-effect business. People are on Twitter because people are on Twitter. The main thing to do with those is to not fuck them up. Jack's distraction, disengagement, and dithering are a perfect match for that. Every time something blows up into an actual PR problem, he promises to listen and think and do better, without every promising anything specific.
But for those of us who think Twitter could be something more, this is all just depressing. They could have spent $2 billion on something useful. Heck, they could have just given each active user $7. And they certainly could have got a CEO with vision and some managerial competence.
[+] [-] _red|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamespullar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethbro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remarkEon|6 years ago|reply
In what way is Elliot "Trump-allied"? He seems like the kind of institutional conservative investor that would hate Trump's attempts at, essentially, implementing a Neo-merchantilist trade and financial policy.