Saturday, November 14, 2015

What to do with Twitter?


Written by James de Rin in London

First off it would be callous not to mention last night's madness across the channel. With the attrocities in Paris still fresh on my mind Twitter has shown that the collective village has a soul and people do care. We all support France and especially Paris the most romatic city in the world that just got turded by some brainwashed young french born men. Barely in their twenties they carried out their orders from within France but guided by the head of a serpent who only knows chaos, death and destruction. Whatever your politics surely this is the tipping point of passive aggressive! But then democracy has many jealous ideological enemies. The french are a tough bunch the foreign legion comes to mind and even though Mr Pudding runs the place he is extremely decisive if not economically educated. So closing the borders, locking down Paris with the military was smart. 

Back to the blog...
OK so the stock market took a dump on Friday, high street retail is dead just go look at the malls! Duh! long live the internet, and twitter is back below its IPO price at $25.17 While tech has been and still is the actual engine of the USA economy. Silicon Valley is like a Dyson (vacuum cleaner) for brains and funding. I can't help but think that the smartest people in tech are missing a trick, well missing an out of the box helicopter view. Namely crowd sourcing or crowd funding. Social media is the glue of the internet and its management either monetise it well or badly. 

Over at Facebook when the stock was $16.00 a share, today its at $107. I remember everyone  saying its over, everyone is transitioning to their baby blanket (cell phone, mobile phone) goodbye Facebook. No more desk top Facebook...So what does Zuckerberg do he moves with the crowd and makes Facebook mobile friendly and then adds companies who have built in ecosystems that keep you in the Facebook walled garden. I digress "What to do with Twitter" now that Ballmer has bought a billion dollars worth and that guy in Saudi Arabia Alwaleed  In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud revealed that he now owns 5.17 percent of Twitter’s stock, or 34,948,975 shares.

Twitter is saved. Not exactly...its stock went up and now its back down. 

Dorsey needs a new vision like Facebook sauce or "Twitter Crowd Funding." Let's imagine everyone on twitter individuals and corporates want to raise money for their idea or project or start up. A few words, a hollywood log line or an elevator pitch and you are off and running. Not allowed to do that you say...well you are now SEC just approved final rules of the Jobs act...here is what it says...exactly 

On October 30, 2015, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted final rules under Title III of the JOBS Act to enable U.S. companies to offer and sell securities through crowdfunding (Regulation Crowdfunding). This alert provides an overview of the SEC crowdfunding rules slated to become effective in early May 2016, with certain related forms, such as Form Funding Portal (which will be used to register as a funding portal), becoming effective at the end of January 2016.

So Mr Dorsey after firing a percentge of all your staff (well that made the firm less bloated so good move for the stock but not a vision for the future) and instead of following Twitter's mission statement whatever that is and always following behind Facebook go where no social media company has gone before. Go Crowd funding before Facebook does. If you really have balls go see Mr Timberlake and give Myspace a purpose as well "Music Crowd Funding" or Twitter will end up in the trash with netscape, myspace etc...

Aggregate your users into a funding aggregation tool using the tweet as the pitch. Buy Kickstarter and Indigogo and hook up with apple pay.

Just imagine twitter "we fund any idea, company, start up, anywhere on the planet, anytime, 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Elevator Pitch

Funding Target

and reboot Yahoo as a marketing tool for Twitter Crowd Funding...Mr Dorsey leverage the tools you have, the twitter ecosphere, (307 million active users x $10.00 investment is a lot of dollars its $3.07 billion per month from the crowd funding movement, the Jobs Act and the rewards proven system of Kickstarter and Indiegogo! Create the twitter Silicon Valley Ecosphere

Do what Hollywood does er I mean Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu do, make a pilot and then ask the crowd if they like it by watching it. Put in a button with three clicks to funding. 

1. Pitch
2. Synopsis/Team/ Video
3. Funding Target - Thermometer Achieved or not (funding portal)

Wannabe be! 

*Twitter will become a marketing tool for sports with Ballmer's help, but it needs to become a future crowd funding bank as well!