What I would do as CEO of Twitter
Let me throw my hat in the ring here, share my qualifications, and then lay out a roadmap for every single thing that I would accomplish spanning from day one to the end of my term.
First of all, my history with Twitter goes all the way back to day one. I’m the sixth user to join Twitter. Jack joined before me. But I joined before every other board member. I was 50 seconds more excited to join than Ev, and weeks more excited to join than Dick.
I’ve got CEO experience, I’m an expert at human development (for all Dick’s compliments about the team, I think they can be even better), I have deep software engineering experience (read my programming book which could be a manual for rewriting the tech stack for better processing of text messages), etc.
But I’m always suspicious of credentials, so let me convince you by laying out my roadmap.
Day 1
I would fix the @messages screen, specifically my @messages screen.
Tons of legitimate Twitter accounts are accidentally responding to a Tweet I posted in March of 2006.
The bug is in the new conversation display. Here’s an example Tweet that will trigger the bug.
If you click through that link you’ll get the intended @TMZ Tweet:
But if you retweet, the link will be truncated and then interpreted as an attempt to link to the Tweet with the database id of 609. That’s my Tweet!
Here’s an example retweet gone wrong:
And this is ruining my @messages.
Day 2
I would resign.
Me vs. the Competition
If some other candidate is capable of fixing this bug, then I will gladly bow out of the competition and throw my support behind them.
However, my fear is that no other candidate will care as much as I do about this bug and the impact it has on the Twitter community, staff and shareholders.
If that is the case, then Mr. Currie, Mr. Williams and Mr. Fenton, I humbly submit my name as candidate for CEO of Twitter.
