Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago · 4 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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Twitter Ain’t Dead. Two Steps to Fix It, Jack

Twitter Ain’t Dead. Two Steps to Fix It, Jack

This is an open letter to Jack Dorsey

Jack, you have your work cut out for you. No one can argue that. Twitter is "stagnant". Wall Street is pooping all over Twitter. Wall Street isn't exactly throwing roses at you either. People are jumping ship. 

They all say you're screwed.

Big whup.

Wall Street alternates between pooping on someone and kissing their butt. I seem to remember them pooping on Steve Jobs too. If anything, you're in good company.

Twitter is stagnant?

Again, big whoop. Twitter has 320,000,000 active users. Okay, so it isn't growing.

And?

Being active on Twitter is not the same as being active on LinkedIn or Facebook. Tweeters tweet often. I might update Facebook a couple of times a month (if that). I might comment on LinkedIn four, or five times one day a week. I rarely post long-form there anymore. 

A slow day on Twitter is 100 tweets, retweets, and mentions.

Yes, many, if not most, of us are dedicated, frequent users.

It’s easier to build a following on Twitter than anywhere else. Twitter also has a pretty good API. Scratch that. It has an amazing API. It has a free Analytics package that rivals paid ones. Those points make Twitter the absolute best public platform to publicize content, bar none.

Didn’t you ever hear that content is king?

If so, wouldn’t the best place to publicize it be queen?

Right now, the Queen is smack dab stuck in an identity crisis.

These types of situations tend to be temporary.

Twitter is like a thirty-five-year-old woman. A woman who was just called, “Ma’am,” for the first time. 

She stands in full mature beauty. Yet, she doesn’t quite see it that way.

She is at the height of her womanhood yet mourns the loss of her girlishness. There’s an adjustment period. Soon, she will realize she is more attractive, more powerful, more desirable than ever. 

In time, she will understand just how much more interesting she has become.

For now, she’s just pissed off at being called, “Ma’am!”

Step 1 — Back to Your Roots (sort of)

The origin of Twitter’s 140-character limit is due to texting (SMS protocol). SMS can handle 160 characters. Take off 20 for back-end stuff and you have a 140-character Tweet.

Great!

SMS is the holy grail for marketers and content creators. Text message open rates are light-years ahead of email or social media. There’s only one way to get better engagement rates than SMS. You need to grab someone by the shoulders and yell your message in their face.

That would be somewhat invasive, though.

So, Jack, include a text option on follows. I should be able to choose to allow someone to text me a link to his/her tweet — within certain limits.

Technically, it would be easy.

Logistically, not so much.

You need to protect against text-bombing. Mind you, just making it easy to cut texting rights would fix the issue. Include a quick-remove link. Text-Tweeters would think twice. Tweets are 140 characters. Texts are 160 characters. You have room.

Given the international playing field, text-tweet scheduling would be a must. I wouldn’t leave it to the Text-Tweeter. A Text-Tweeter should be able to specify a time to tweet-text (text-tweet?). Adjust broadcasts for time zones. If I say, tweet-text at noon that means noon for each time zone.

Nobody should ever get more than one text of a particular tweet. You would need a type of anti-plagiarism algorithm to recognize whether a tweet-text is a repeat.

I’d limit it to opt-in ads, major announcements, new long-form content, etc, but, hey, that’s not my call.

Step 2 — The 10K Question

In two words, “Do it!” But, don’t just flip a switch. 

Ten thousand characters is a helluva lot. That’s big enough for case studies. That’s big enough for smallish white papers. I’ve seen a few eBooks shorter than that.

So don’t just flip a switch.

Your latest announcement is a step in the right direction. People say they don't want to lose the 140. Okay, you kept it. You just changed what counts as part of it. Cute. I don't think anyone is fooled, but I think they appreciate your effort.

Of course "quote tweeting" will effectively mean that the 140 no longer exists. Sort of. 

I can conceivably tweet War and Peace in its entirety, 140 characters at a time. Each piece quotes the previous one.

That would be incredibly annoying to write, and likely even more annoying to read. Sooner or later people would insist you implement the 10,000. They would insist you create a blogging platform. 

Smart, but you may be too late by then. Many of us independents have already found a happy home on beBee. By the time the rest scream for it, you will likely be S.O.L.

Details, details, the devil is in the details.

No, I don't think your gambit will work. But, it's sure a good try.

Don’t underestimate the numbers.

You don’t need millions of publishers to hit big numbers. It’s sort of like crowd-sourcing. One independent blogger doesn’t amount to much. But, taken as a group, we kick the ass of any news agency you care to name.

Who provides LinkedIn with its content? It sure as hell isn’t the relative handful of Influencers. It’s about 150,000 professionals sharing their thoughts and ideas with each other. They combine to create 600,000 original posts a month, albeit of variable quality.

Who else can do that? Who else can say that? 

Never has such a large, productive group been so poised for flight. Never has another platform been so welcoming to them. Never has such a large audience as Twitter been so slandered.

So there you have it. Large output meets large audience. 

So easily said. 

Not so easily done.

beBee will likely get the lion's share of those 150,000 fertile minds. You have access to 320,000,000 minds who want their stuff. 

You get it, Jack. beBee gets it. The Unwashed Masses get it. 

Wall Street doesn’t. They forget that the numbers aren't numbers at all. 

They're people.

They're minds.

Free those minds and they will pull you along. 

Then you can take all the poop Wall Street threw at you and serve it right back up.

Use fine china and quality silverware.

They have their standards, you know.

For a rundown of big changes coming to Twitter, see here.


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Comments

Paul "Pablo" Croubalian

7 years ago #2

#1
Wow, high praise indeed. I'm not sure if I deserve it, but thank you,

Mohammed Abdul Jawad

7 years ago #1

Well written Paul \. Bold statements, with a tincture of precise words and plain humor. Reading your post, I presume you have a tone similar to O. Henry, the famous short story writer of yester years from New York. :)

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