Jack Dorsey and Twitter: Can you have a part-time product visionary? | Hacker News Reader

Jack Dorsey and Twitter: Can you have a part-time product visionary?

gigaom.com

31 pointsprotomyth11 comments

Has Twitter ever had a vision? Their product direction seems to have been largely based on cribbing what users and third party clients come up with.

I suspect they were originally angling to be a communications medium, but somewhere they decided that being a content network was a better idea.

From what I read, they aren't aiming for an IPO, so they are definitely here to stay - or at least they think so.

Costolo's Charlie Rose interview made it sound like Twitter and its success happened completely by accident, and the company will now try to capitalize on it instead of trying to understand what made Twitter successful and grow that aspect of it.

It's only going to get worse from here.

No.

I think we all know the answer to the question but hope for something magical to intercede and steer Twitter the right way, but obviously this is never going to happen.

They're going to grow the site into a platform instead of just a service with a payments/microtransaction system.

I kinda hate myself for liking Steve Ballmer as a CEO more than Costolo, but there it is.

Last I heard Jack was working 16hr days, 8 at Twitter and 8 at Square. I'm sure it was an exaggeration, but any amount of working day after day at an org gives you the leverage you need to provide vision.

Twitter will be fine.

I think product visionary is not a full time job. You don't work out a vision with a pen and paper. Product visions are like good ideas, they always hit you when you are doing something completely different.

Exactly.

This is the hardest thing to learn. Stepping away from your desk when you're under pressure is just so counter-intuitive. Even if it's often worked before, there's that voice that says "Yes, but it might not this time, and you're under the gun."

Ignore that voice.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies to this article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines

Yes.

For the right individual (parallel entrepreneur type), time limits (due to working on more than one campaign, product, startup, etc) almost always guarantee focus, quick decision making, originality, boldness. There's no overanalyzing.

Elon Musk ?

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