I think the Return of Jack Dorsey is going to end up being yet another stumble in Twitter's disastrous management history.
It's so pathetic that a company as successful as Twitter needs to settle for a part-time effort from Jack Dorsey rather than a dedicated person in their most important position.
There was a techcrunch story a while ago -- my apologies for not having the link -- that basically claimed Google made counteroffers that couldn't be refused to some product managers that Twitter had tried to hire. So I think they're at least trying hard, but if G offered someone $10+MM of a sure thing, you'd be a fool not to take it.
Edit: actually, goddamn. TC says G offered up to $150MM. [1] That's generational wealth. From the article: "Google may have paid as much as $150 million in stock grants to retain key product employees Sundar Pichai and Neal Mohan, say multiple sources."
If Jack really is the prognosticator of web products like I keep hearing, he will have to put new talent in place. Twitter is really a special product but it's going to work - it must have Jack's vision seen through every pixel, without compromise.
Can any of the new product folk at Twitter do something to prioritize anti-spam measures? The feebleness of Twitter's spam efforts, relative to the simplicity and tenacity of the spammers, borders on contempt for the user experience.
Go on and tweet "iPhone" or "iPad." Often you'll get a couple spam tweets within a minute. Almost guaranteed within a couple hours.
Is spam primarily an issue in search? I get maybe 1 - 2 @reply spam tweets a week. I occasionally search for stuff and see spam in there. However, I've never felt "OMG SPAM!" about twitter's experience.
The most obvious move (pun intended) would be to hire a bunch of top scientists who study emotional and social signaling.
It will be independent startups and amateur dilettantes are going to discover these technologies, because their financial interests are most aligned. So I suspect the internet marketers are going to be the ones to profit. Of course spamming is short sighted... the smart ones have yet to reveal their strategies.
Find the influential nodes on the network; cater to their interests; profit. Figure out who influences the influencers; cater to their interests; profit. Bubble all the way down. Trace the inner circles of influence until you can find cost-effective points of entry.
If anyone else is thinking similarly please get in touch...there's got to be some linear algebra to collapse this into an effective system. Or maybe it's a non-linear system. Dunno. I got to study up on Neural Networks; I prepaid my tutor for a session.
Twitter has some serious UX issues to overcome. If this sacking is a step towards finally dealing with those issues, then Twitter Inc. will only be stronger. If its just some part of a power play or structural re-alignment, then I fear that Twitter may be at risk of losing the plot. They've got an awful lot of work to do to start rationalizing the sharp edges on their service or risk alienating the next wave of Twitter adopters. The UX and value proposition is way to arcane for most people and I view this as Twitters biggest challenge to continued growth.
Identifying and brainstorming new products, talking with users and potential users, figuring out if the product makes financial sense, writing up requirements (with widely varying levels of detail), working with developers to ensure the product being built matches the requirements, keeping people across the company informed about the product's status with the appropriate level of detail, describing the product to and then training sales, coming up with longer-term plans (the 'product roadmap'), creating marketing materials for the product, chatting with the media about the product -- I've done all of those things as a product manager at a variety of places.
Product managers become useful when a company grows, people specialize their functions somewhat, and everyone no longer knows everything about what everyone else is doing. Good product managers do their best to eliminate surprises.
It's the sort of job where you learn by doing, and in my experience there's a lot of terrible product managers out there.
Roughly (and this varies by company) they define/design the functionality of a product, subset of a product of just one feature of a product, keeping in mind the customer/market needs, the symbiosis with the rest of the application and the technical/engineering implications. Furthermore they drive the implementation - either make or delegate implementation schedule, development, testing, deployment, and work with marketing/sales on how to present it to the public (or how to position it within the product).
I have the idea that product managers are often what I the other day heard being called 'intrapreneurs' - people with an internal motivation to create (like entrepreneurs) but who like the things that a larger organization can provide them and that they wouldn't have if they were on their own (secretaries, proper testing team, specialized roles for various tasks etc.).
Decide what a certain piece of a product (or an entire product) does. Let's say you are product manager for the invite piece of twitter. You'd decide how that should work, how it's measured, what to focus on next, etc., and you work with your team of developers/... to make it so.
My respect for Dorsey grows day by day. Rationale: because he's a powerful man.
Fun Rationalizations:
- New Twitter was an awful decision and represented poor judgment. Better product intuition will lead to more usage of the Twitter platform. If you wish to refute this then you must cite relative statistics of social engagement that are better proxies than growth and uniques: one challenge I invite is for someone in the know to contrast Time on Site for Facebook & clients vs. Time on Site for Twitter & clients (vs. potential engagement on Twitter platform).
- An ally of your enemy is not your friend. This move will create cultural stability and reduce confusion.
- Jack has the potential to create an incredible alliance between Twitter and Square, ushering in the new payment protocol, ready to fully embrace a technology like Bitcoin when the moment becomes appropriate.
- Twitter has potential to be the ultimate payment protocol platform because it maps exactly relations between leaders and followers. Money is a metric of social value; so is the leader/follower dichotomy ("Following" people on Twitter, ReTweeting to signal alliance [the same function as laughing], etc. [I don't really know what I'm talking about.]).
Correct you are sir. Jack Dorsey can swiftly steer two companies with billion dollar + valuations as easy as I tie my shoes in the morning (trick there is that I wear sandals or sneakers that are ALWAYS tied so I actually don't have to tie them in the morning).
What's the point you say good man? I tell you now, Dorsey is like Val Kilmer in Top Gun - "that's how he flies, no mistakes." Dorsey just wears us all down and grinds our resistance to a nub with whatever he touches. He is so exacting and precise that what he does now will be seen but not completely understood for years - the world is his canvas.
I only pray he use his powers for good and resist the darker side of his heart - for if he didn't we may all continue to fill little synthetic leather contraptions with green papers, receipts and faceless business cards for years to come.
It's so pathetic that a company as successful as Twitter needs to settle for a part-time effort from Jack Dorsey rather than a dedicated person in their most important position.