Raskolnikov Consultant Group Memorandum Title:

Raskolnikov Consultant Group

Memorandum Title: Troubleshooting for Twitter.

Dearest Twitter Board Members and Esteemed Management Personnel,

You've hired Raskolnikov Consultant Group to do two things, (1) to objectively and earnestly review your company's operations and management style to determine ways in which your company, Twitter, Inc., a social networking and microblogging service, can manage more effectively to improve overall efficiency and increase profits. (2) to delivery our findings, insights, and recommendations to you in a candid and direct manner; pulling, as they say, no punches. Well, we have finished our data collection and analysis and would like to, herein this memorandum, make several solution-oriented recommendations that will hopefully serve as a useful framework for whichever path you decide to take. As president and CEO of the Raskolnikove Consultant Group, I can say that working with the Twitter team was a privilege and an honor.

Before I get into the hard facts and data concerning Twitter, I wanted to (re)tell an old story. I suppose it's not that old, but it's one that many people may be familiar with. The year was 1996, a rogue but visionary auteur was in the process of making his pet-project. The movie had gone massively over-budget and the studio had decided to pull the plug on its operations. Undeterred by this sweeping-the-rug-out-from-under-type maneuver, the brazen film director pressed on. He went to the studio, told the studio heads he would forgo his director's salary (but not his back end percentages), and put up his own money to complete the film. The studio sanctioned his proposal, not believing the movie would make back any money at all, and the rest was, as they say, history. The director I'm referring to is James Cameron. The movie is, if you haven't guessed, Titanic.

Why do I (re)tell this story to you today? The answer to that question is quite simple, because not one manager or executive at Twitter has the temerity, passion, or vision that James Cameron has. This revolving door of CEOs, coaches, and consultants is not indicative of a company that has the resolve, the mettle, the gumption to meet the market pressures and industry challenges it faces, rather it is evidence of the lack of cohesion, lack of passion, lack of single-mindedness necessary to run a long-term successful company. Mark Zuckerberg, James Cameron, Bill Gates have what "it" takes to run a successful company. You, the Twitter, executives do not.

Now, I know this is quite an indictment to make. And let me reassure you that it is not made from a position of passion-based fury, or an agenda-driven compact, i.e. we're not working at the behest of anyone else. We have concluded this assessment from a preponderance of evidence that we are sure you must have noticed yourselves.

For starters, consider the absence of a clearly defined mission statement during the formative years of the company. Only recently have you, the management team, decided to adopt and disseminate a mission statement: "Instantly connect people everywhere to what's most meaningful to them." If Twitter were the passion-project of one, determined, single-minded individual there would not be any ambiguity as to what the mission is. Additionally, Twitter, as you know, began as a side-project. There was no coherent business plan, marketing strategy, or long-term business model in mind when it was created. Instead, you turned it over to the public, the users, to watch what would happen. And now, the inmates run the asylum.

You, the board members and management team, have lost control of Twitter because you never knew how to make sense of what you created. Like the monster in Frankenstein, Twitter began to take on a life of its own and despite efforts to wrangle it in, it still remains stubbornly independent. This is, in part, why you have extreme difficulty monetizing the service. All efforts to install a new marketing stratagem, or interface/application for advertisers are rebuffed by the users, i.e. The "Dickbar." This means revenue is limited to what users will tolerate.

All of these problems circle back to the issues of identity and leadership. And Twitter lacks both. There is no James Cameron behind the scenes. And Speaking of identity, is Twitter a social networking website? Is it the next Facebook? Is it something else altogether? One thinks that if he were to ask each individual member of the board, each individual would give a different answer. And that's because no one has clearly answered these questions. As a result, and despite the relative success of Twitter, confusion abounds -- confusion among the public, among new users, and among the top brass of Twitter, Inc.

As you are all well aware, success is fleeting. Numbers are down and users have grown stagnant. I'm not telling you something you don't already know, just reminding you of the current situation. So now that I've unnerved you, unsettled you, and un-housed you, here is where the fun begins, the solutions. You know the problems, we know the problems, now the question becomes what to we do about those problems? The Raskolnikov Consultant Group sees two solutions and only two solutions. And, in our eyes, one solution is entirely more viable than the other.

Option number 1: SELL! In our expert opinion this is by far the best option, sell Twitter! Run back to Google, and see if they're still willing to pay you $10 billion. If they are, take the money and run. The current estimated value of Twitter is roughly $3.7 billion. $10 billion is more than a fair offer. I know many of you believe that you've only achieved 1% of what Twitter can be, but success isn't built off of potential. It's forged by people who have an unparalleled amount of passion for their business or project or sport, etc. James Cameron didn't make Titanic to make billions of dollars, he made it because he was extremely passionate about telling that story. If money and/or pride and/or vanity are the motivating factors behind your decision not to sell in the first place, which, one thinks they are, remember that pride precedes destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Moreover, from our extensive research and exhaustive data analysis of Twitter, it is apparent that no one is that passionate about Twitter. Twitter is not the brainchild of someone like James Cameron, or Hugh Hefner, or Mark Zuckerberg. It's a side-project that has achieved success because of its users, not because of its management team or board members. Cash in your chips now, while you're ahead. Don't wait until it becomes too late.

Solution number 2 is the hard road to take. It involves legwork and planning and strategizing that not anyone at Twitter had done thus far. It involves creating a vision for Twitter as a whole, setting concrete but realistic goals, and working relentlessly hard until those goals are achieved. It also involves taking back control of Twitter from the Twitter community in a seamless but effective way. It involves devising ways to monetizing the site without disenfranchising the users (MySpace failed to do this in a tactful and appropriate way and has since lost much of their market share to Facebook). It involves asking and answering the toughest question of all -- who is going to lead Twitter in the next decade? Doresy, Williams, Costolo, someone else?