Hah! This is funny in all sorts of ways. Supposed "activist" investors settling for a quick ransom. Twitter paying the ransom by taking money from possibly worse people. Twitter paying $2 bn in ransom for
Jack, the guy who is at best a half-time CEO, and who has presided over a mix of stagnation and deck-chair rearrangement. And of course the online panic that this was going to be a Trump-allied guy's way of dominating Twitter when it was just another cash grab.
In some ways, Jack is the perfect CEO for Twitter. Twitter is a network-effect business. People are on Twitter because people are on Twitter. The main thing to do with those is to not fuck them up. Jack's distraction, disengagement, and dithering are a perfect match for that. Every time something blows up into an actual PR problem, he promises to listen and think and do better, without every promising anything specific.
But for those of us who think Twitter could be something more, this is all just depressing. They could have spent $2 billion on something useful. Heck, they could have just given each active user $7. And they certainly could have got a CEO with vision and some managerial competence.
In some ways, Jack is the perfect CEO for Twitter. Twitter is a network-effect business. People are on Twitter because people are on Twitter. The main thing to do with those is to not fuck them up. Jack's distraction, disengagement, and dithering are a perfect match for that. Every time something blows up into an actual PR problem, he promises to listen and think and do better, without every promising anything specific.
But for those of us who think Twitter could be something more, this is all just depressing. They could have spent $2 billion on something useful. Heck, they could have just given each active user $7. And they certainly could have got a CEO with vision and some managerial competence.