Twitter is in middle of a tumultuous time as a company. It is in play, thanks to an offer Elon Musk. It is a company that has underperformed as a business. It has anemic new user growth. The revenue targets are optimistic. Does Twitter have the right captain to navigate the company through the stormy seas. Is the CEO Parag Agarwal, who replaced Jack Dorsey, the man for the job? Continue reading Musk or Not, Twitter CEO Needs To Go
Sitting inside my concrete cocoon, mid-way between the soaring blue sky and the shaded San Francisco side street, I can see the blue waters of the San Francisco bay. It all looks and feels quite normal. The temperate morning with the occasional waft of chilly air reminds me of my good fortune to live in … Continue reading Out of water
Square, the other company, started by Jack Dorsey, recently announced that it is buying Afterpay, a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) company, for a whopping $29 billion. The BNPL category is hot. Max Levchin’s Affirm has gone public. Klarna, the emerging fintech giant from Sweden, has an offering. And even Apple is getting into the game. … Continue reading The Sad Truth of Buy Now Pay Later Services
Christmas came in March for Tidal, the increasingly irrelevant, money-losing music streaming service, and Jay-Z misadventure. Square, the digital finance company co-founded and led by Jack Dorsey, will pay nearly $300 million and acquire a majority stake in the company. But why, would Square do this? It’s a bit of a head-scratcher. One could argue … Continue reading Is Tidal worth Jack?
Ever since Twitter unveiled its new Fleets, I’ve been mulling over the company’s future. What can they do that’s uniquely their own? How can they take advantage of their past and present in a way that builds a better future? Needless to say, Fleets — a watered-down version of a content-sharing format introduced by Snap … Continue reading What Twitter Can Learn From Spotify
This isn’t the first time I have written about the dichotomy of technology. We are often caught between convenience and consequences. Some of the consequences are of our own making. But often, there is a lack of understanding on the part of technology companies, especially platforms that have replaced our traditional spaces — Twitter, Instagram, … Continue reading Tech and the inevitable unintended consequences
No matter what Jack Dorsey (CEO, Twitter) says, he is going to come under criticism. While some of it is justified, but a lot of hyperventilation in the media is because the press is in a compensatory mode. After having championed Facebook, Twitter and others as saviors, a decade later everyone is waking up with … Continue reading When Jack (Dorsey) met Mark (Zuckerberg)
After ten years of limiting its tweets to 140 characters (a limit imposed due to the limitations of old school SMS systems), Twitter decided it was time to experiment with the character limit and change it to 280 characters as a trial for some of its users. I am not sure why 280, but it is not going to keep me awake at night. Apparently it did get a lot of people hot-and-bothered. Like Dave Pell (of NextDraft):
…the reason Twitter thrived is because people were not intimidated by a big blank page that reminded them of the essays they dreaded during youth. Most people hate writing. Hence our societal move toward emojis and animated GIFs as a main mode of communication. 140 characters is so short that it doesn’t feel like writing. It certainly doesn’t feel like you need to be a writer to participate. 280 moves you away from “everyone can do it” and towards, “this is a great place for English majors.” And trust me, as an English major, that’s not a path that leads to an increased stock market valuation.
He wasn’t alone – Twitter was ablaze with dismissals of 280 characters. It left me scratching my head. What’s the big deal? I mean you don’t have to use 280 characters. Whether you are using 140 or 280 characters to be an idiot/genius/self-promotional/funny/angry, you are going to be an idiot/genius/self-promotional/funny/angry. Continue reading “Change is hard, even in Silicon Valley”
Six years ago, when Jack Dorsey announced his second company, Square, we sat down and talked not about the product but the moral imperative behind the company. “We went through the whole payments process and worked on designing a brand-new (person-to-person) payment system,” he said. In several subsequent conversations, private and public, that discussion continued … Continue reading Hip to be Square
Comedians use #hashtags as part of their standup routines. Companies have made #hashtags part of their marketing campaigns. Content companies use #hashtags for events and of course, Square has made #hashtags literally money! I was talking to Scott Beale about the ghost of the web past, when Square announced $Cashtags, which is essentially a unique identifier that enables anyone … Continue reading I’ll HashTag That!
