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Topic: Social Enterprise

Predictable: Twitter loses another co-founder as it searches for business model...

Summary: Twitter's co-founders aren't big users of the service - disengaged means uninterested - no reason to stay...

Tom Foremski

By for Tom Foremski: IMHO |

Earlier this year I predicted that Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone wouldn't be around for long. How did I do this?

It was simple:

I looked at how much each of them used Twitter. The answer was not a lot, just one or two Tweets a day.

Also, when I saw them speak at a Commonwealth Inforum event I was shocked at how little insight they provided into Twitter -- another sign that they weren't engaged with the business and the product.

Twitter Comms Chief Sean Garrett spun my take by saying that Twitter is not about Tweeting but about reading. Apparently Messrs Williams and Stone read a lot of tweets. Bullshit. If you are reading tweets you are also re-tweeting and they did little of anything on Twitter.

Biz Stone is leaving to join Ev Williams at Obvious Corp. an incubator, reports Bloomberg.

I like the Twitter service and I like the Twitter founders and team -- despite my harsh criticism of Twitter threatening to leave San Francisco unless it got big tax breaks. But I'm worried if Twitter's management knows what it's doing.

The company now has no full-time founder - Jack Dorsey is doing double duty and has his hands full with Square -- which just raised a new round of financing: $100 million.

If there is anything I have learned about successful startups it's that it's important to have a founder or someone senior in management that has the passion to lead the rest of the team. I don't see that at Twitter. I'm worried that in its bid to find a lucrative business model it will do some dumb things and mess up an excellent service.

My advice to Twitter management is: Please stay out of the way -- we like it the way it is.<

Please see:

Will Co-Founder Biz Stone Be Next To Leave Twitter? - SVW

Twitter Is 5 Years Old - What's Its Future? It's In The Tweets... - SVW

Twitter Touts "Social Responsibility" But Threatens To Leave SF Over Local Taxes - SVW


Topic: Social Enterprise

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  • RE: Predictable: Twitter loses another co-founder as it searches for business model...

    I wonder when the Twitter fad will die? It's pretty pointless.
    Droid101
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Predictable: Twitter loses another co-founder as it searches for business model...

      @Droid101

      I thought so too until I found Joe Rogan's channel. He tweets and retweets links to really cool articles. I find so many videos and fascinating articles by watching his podcast and reading his twitter that it's amazing. None of the other tweeters are useful like he is. So now I see what's so cool about Twitter, it's an amazing service if you're subscribed to the right person tweeting.

      Best wishes :)
      josh92
      Reply Vote

    • I know quite a few people who early on like it

      @Droid101
      but found that tweeting pointless things was (as you said) "pointless".

      So they left it.
      John Zern
      Reply Vote

    • RE: Predictable: Twitter loses another co-founder as it searches for business model...

      @Droid101
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  • Let it Die...

    Who needs it? A silly, vapid, useless waste of time. Tweet this!
    jpr75_z
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Predictable: Twitter loses another co-founder as it searches for business model...

    Twitter seems about as inane as starting the body of a post in a text field clearly labeled "Subject".
    Playdrv4me
    Reply Vote

  • Pointless or just lonely?

    Trouble with Twitter is not its pointlessness (which it shares with FB and all the others), but its single function. FB lets people write just as much drivel, but it's restricted to people who have chosen to take it. And FB has so much else.<br><br>Twitter has no place to go; it is handy for celeb / news followers, but FB and maybe G+ will get to offer a better, more rounded service. And in a social sense, Tw can never win people away from FB etc. Its a one-way churn.<br><br>And as a for a business model? Forget it.<br><br>Lucky for Tw, its running costs are (relatively) low, and for all the development I've seen, that's a pretty small budget too.<br><br>It could do just fine for many years to come; but in all its current markets, it's at peak or close to it.<br><br>And if something better comes along ...<br><br>... I'm not saying don't use it. Just don't buy shares.
    Heenan73
    Reply Vote

  • Overchoice

    I rather tire of all the various places to have to sign on to in order to (supposedly) get the latest. I have subscribed to twitter, but from there on it is left-field. I think i did it to "follow" some site, but never hear from it again. Waste of time. I find a lot of stuff through google which seems more practical.
    General Ludd
    Reply Vote

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