Yesterday I posted an idea for Twitter that they merge with Slack, and have Stewart Butterfield, their founder, run the whole thing. Shortly after posting it, Stewart was tagged by another Twitter user (I don't like to do that myself, because I don't like being dragged into discussions, you tend to be cc'd on all replies and that goes on indefinitely, and Stewart didn't ask for this), and replied that he was busy. Not surprising. I didn't intend it as a literal suggestion, I wanted to show that there was another choice for Twitter, that perhaps wasn't being given enough thought.

The two courses suggest completely different kinds of leaders.

If you go with #1, you might as well hire back Dick Costolo. He's probably available. And he has experience trying to lead the company in the direction the street appears to want Twitter to go.

But the second course, which would be one you'd want someone like Butterfield to lead, suggests hiring someone who has deep product experience in tech, and might see how to evolve the current Twitter product into an exciting platform. I think the potential is there. Starting from a base of 300 million users is not nothing! :-)

I don't go to tech industry parties these days, so I can't tell you who might be floating around in the valley who has wacky ideas and yearns to drive something big into some new uncharted territory.

And I have no idea if such a transition could work if Twitter is a public company. Maybe this could only happen as part of an acquisition, effectively taking Twitter private.