Did you hear the one about the CEO who wanted to create business change that would hurt his company?
No, I’m not talking about Miley Cyrus killing her Twitter account. Yesterday, Evan Williams, CEO and founder of Twitter, said that he wants, really, really badly to kill off the “suggested user” feature of Twitter. I say “hooey”.
Make no mistake: Mr. Williams doesn’t want to kill that feature; he just wants it to be of more utility to Twitter (and, I’m happy to say, to users).
If you think about who benefits from Twitter, it isn’t the “user”. It’s Ashton Kutcher. It’s the aforementioned Miley Cyrus. It’s anyone who can convince many, many people to follow them, and then somehow turn that into a marketing machine. So no, Evan Williams doesn’t want this feature to go away; he wants more people to get value from it so that they will keeping using Twitter.
Done right, this can be a business change that will help Twitter survive. To find the business changes that will help you, just ask yourself what has to happen to keep people coming back. If you like, you can even ask me.
