How to Make Twitter Better?

There has been a lot of commentary lately about how we can make Twitter “better”. This is understandable given the noisy mess that the service has become in recent years. It is a sad state of affairs to witness its decline.

For full disclosure, I love Twitter. I own Twitter stock, I’ve been an active Twitter user since July of 2007 (having sent more than 64,000 tweets over the last 11 years, which adds up to more than 15 every single day). I’ve written many Medium posts about Twitter over the years…so this isn’t a hit piece.

But there is a problem with the conversation lately.

Yesterday, Jack tweeted the below:

In the interview with the Washington Post he said:

“The most important thing that we can do is we look at the incentives that we’re building into our product,” Dorsey said. “Because they do express a point of view of what we want people to do — and I don’t think they are correct anymore.”

While this observation is interesting it misses an obvious more central point: the incentive of the business model of Twitter —selling advertising— is in direct conflict with the goal of having a high quality conversation.

In many ways, the rise of President Trump and the violent nature of our public discourse has been a saving grace for Old Media companies. People watch cable network “news” coverage and click on Tweets to engage with content that triggers them and the tribalism of our time is “good television” — it sells new advertising.

Advertising is Cancer

The challenge of Twitter goes all the way down to the way it is structured as a company and the industry it finds itself in. Most shareholders of the Company (myself excluded) are focused on short-term financial performance and therefore are motivated to encourage the company to pursue business models which might be bad for the long term value of the network that might be good in the short run for financials. Advertising that focuses on triggering our worst impulses is exactly that business model. The more inflammatory, the more engaged, the more ad dollars in the short run.

The disconnect between users of the network and monetization of the network creates a fundamental tension that goes to the heart of the service.

The fact that people like Alex Jones wrap their advertising business in slanted political jargon against the other biased media outlets is just smart marketing in the race to catch people’s attention. Both Twitter itself who seeks to gain ad dollars from the engagement of triggered users and the “brands” it supports who use the open nature of the platform to prey on people and get them to “click through” on garbage headlines are to blame for the horrendous nature of the content.

Twitter is fundamentally misaligned with its users until it changes the focus of the business to truly be about helping people have the best information and conversations possible.

This will take leadership because it flies in the face of the way Old Media continues to be monetized today.

Twitter should issue Twokens

There is a simple way to do this: Twitter should introduce the Twoken Coin and distribute ownership directly to Twitter users.

Twitter could accomplish this through a one-time Twoken sale at $30 per Twoken only available to users of the service. If 10% of the roughly 335 MM Monthly Active Users bought a Twoken that would raise roughly $1B in cash that the company could use to modify the service.

These Twokens could represent a new class of stock that had a voting right on what happens with the service going forward.

Furthermore, Twoken holders could be incentivized to earn more with good behavior by posting high quality content or through earning Interactions, Likes or Retweets.

This could fundamentally reorient what Twitter is about to make it about the users.

Twitter could then charge for premium services like the Blue check mark or other premium products available to Twoken holders. If 1/3 of the roughly 35 MM Twoken holders paid $10/user/month for these premium users would provide an additional $1.2B per year. If 10% of Total users paid for premium services over time that would represent more than $4B in additional revenues. This is more than the total revenues of Twitter today forecasted to be roughly $3B in 2019.

If the company caught Facebook due to this better strategy, who has ~2B MAUs and was able to monetize 10% at $10 / user per month it would equate to $24B in revenues or 8 times the current 2018 forecast.

Actually, we should build a better decentralized network from the ground up.

But all the above is virtually impossible.

Maybe a better idea would be to build an entirely new network owned by the users from the beginning. The network should have a clear set of Community Values from the beginning and incentives aligned with those values.

Users should earn more value in the network for generous participation. They should be able to be kicked out of the network for negative actions and/or have their ownership reduced for these types of behaviors.

Advertising should be banned from the beginning and Old Media brands who promote clickbait should be shunned.

This new network should have the ability to beat all the Old Networks because by focusing on the right incentives from the beginning, as Jack rightly pointed out, it could promote better behavior.

Incentivizing generosity and sharing of quality content. Encouraging filtering of signal above noise. Rewarding constructive dialogue and debate. Punishing trolls, hate, violent behaviors and otherwise. This stuff isn’t rocket science and with the power of Utility Tokens and Programmable Contracts which exists now because of Blockchain technology all of the above is possible today and more.

Why not have vertical and horizontal infinite scrolls? Why not have Video chats and responses in-line? Why not do more than “retweets” and “likes”?

So much more is possible today in building what Twitter could have become but can’t because it is too late.

How will we monetize this new network? I really don’t know. The users will own it so they should decide.

Ultimately, who cares what it is “worth”? It would be better. That is more than worth it.