Twitter’s stock price has dipped (save for the acquisition rumors), starkly contrasting with other favorite social media properties. Wall Street media are already calling for Dick Costolo’s replacement after what some call his continued struggle to define a vision.
The world, according to
Now, one should not lend too much credence to Wall Street traders (plus or minus) for the simple reason of what they are; fair-weather friends at best. Their conclusions based on the information provided during quarterly earnings hindsight sessions cannot lead to an accurate depiction of Twitter’s yet untold foresight. A reason traders of public stock can predict a company’s intrinsic value with the same accuracy by which one can predict time—no more than twice a day and failing the other 86,398 seconds a day.
Nevertheless, the hubris and gravitas of influential traders’ collective opinion can apply severe pressure on who gets to run a public company, and Dick should either lay out a compelling vision for Twitter or be concerned about his role at Twitter.
Smokescreen
The Vine video network’s creation one year ago and a recent string of acquisitions are evidence the smokescreen of alternative monetary schemes is not hiding the reality of Twitter’s suffering core competency encased in the debilitating barking-dog syndrome of socialism. Manageable as a participant, perhaps when you have only one dawg, not when the whole world wants to become yours.
Let’s face it, not everyone with a mouth should use it to shout their opinions from the rooftop. The Romans and the Turks (who still use a system of codes to call and interact from the rooftops) figured that out quickly during early civilization.
In the same way, not everyone with a computer should be given carte-blanche to broadcast their opinions to the world — especially not when most ideas are not theirs but often a regurgitation and amplification of others. Twitter has quickly become the equivalent of a town-hall meeting where not every sender is as informed as they should be, and neither are the recipients. Now imagine a town hall where the world chimes into the cacophony.
Twitter users proudly collect followers like cowboys round up cattle. For a cowboy, the number of cattle matters. Losing one will affect the money in his pocket; for real value to be established, not the number of followers matters but the quality of those who speak and listen.
Without the establishment of merit, any social network will merely revert to the excessive reverberation of socialism. The exact socialism we tried so hard not to slip into in this country. And anyone getting “news” from Twitter will soon find out that a dog that barks too much must be silenced.
Toss religion
Long before the birth of technology – people have worked hard to contrive a proxy of discerning quality, a.k.a. merit, through artificial (and mostly oligarchic) constructs, in which the purported value of those who speak increases their exposure and impact.
An abysmal job at that, as I discovered in my self-imposed analysis of the state of macroeconomics, which I re-define as the rules of our household. A meritocracy relies on the paradoxical rules of a free-market construct, rules which are mostly missing. A free-market construct relies on a relativity theory of universal freedom left embarrassingly undefined (until now). And yet, we dare call ourselves the leaders of the free world without even defining what constitutes universal freedom. I shake my head at such boisterous yet hollow claims.
Collectively we have done a terrible job evolving the definition and application of economics to remain relevant to its constituents. Our religion of economics is severely outdated and false (yes, I will deconstruct classical economics in more detail later): its correlative computations are voodoo science, lacking any solid causal relevance.
I am sorry to tear down the many religions of our ancestors: Jesus did not walk on water, nor can economic foresight for betterment be predicated on formulas derived from hindsight’s imperfection. No matter what version of classical floats your boat, economics has failed us. So, I can understand why technologists are uninspired and uninformed by economics and shun it altogether.
Feel free to toss our prevailing religion of economics – I do too – but do not throw the elementary lessons of evolution out with the economic bathwater.
Break all rules but one
Nowadays, every technology company, including Twitter, understandably ignores our religion of economics. By default, they deploy a free-for-all void of paradoxical rules that subsequently fails to protect the many individual interpretations and pursuits of freedom from each other. Therefore, those systems become the opposite of free and violate nature’s evolutionary rules.
The most blatant violation is the presumption of equality. Yes, you read that right; equality is a violation. Nature’s directive is to purposely not create us all quite equal. Consider that evolution dictates any species’ value, and longevity is predicated on the strengths of differences, not on its commonalities. Nature rewards those differences with dominance and endurance, so the fittest survive and reproduce more prolifically.
Groupthink is the kiss of death to change. For Twitter (in its default state), not implementing a meritocracy that would exemplify our differences violates humanity’s evolution and thus implodes. Similarly, any species’ development is doomed when no extraordinary members are left to infuse adaptation to an ever-changing environment.
Innovation should question all man-made rules, but it should not challenge the preeminent rules of evolution – or by nature’s law, it is poised to become unsustainable. And so will Twitter if it does not implement an evolutionary meritocracy.
