Deep Twitter Thoughts—-How Would You Spend Twitter's $100 million?

Yahoo is spending $100 million on an ad campaign. It should spend the money on a documentary to teach brands how to piss money away and ignore your customers.

Now Twitter has $100 million. Maybe they will loan Yahoo the money for the campaign and T. Rowe Price will take a commission on it, but I think there are better uses. As Chris Dixon points out…Twitter should be investing in PRODUCTS.

It is hard to imagine running a company with 54 employees, tremendous brand recognition and open filed opportunities and $100 million CASH in the bank. Cash and brand recognition are not Twitter’s problems.

Some other problems twitter does not have:

1. I have been to Twitter and the food is already good and freshly prepared.

2. They already have pretty killer t’s .

3. The people are splendid and talented.

They have THREE problems as I see them…revenue not being one of them (today).

1. The product only works a little bit.

2. Whether it works or not, Twitter is WAY understaffed for the task at hand today.

3. I am not using the homepage to discover or learn anything.

I can’t imagine that problem 1 will cost more than $1-$2 million to truly solve. If they can’t…$1 billion won’t help.

Even if Twitter quickly hires 200 employees, the burn will be relatively low for the opportunity at hand.

I think dealing with problem 3 is the key. If this Twitter Suggested List is the best Twitter has to offer after 3 years, they should be ashamed. The new web is about discovery and filtering, but forcing people to do it because ‘it’s easy’ or others will do it, is a ridiculously lazy and negligent. If I need Twitter’s homepage to discover JetBlue and Dell, Tony Robbins and Ashton Kutcher…continue to count me as unloyal to the brand. If I must use Twitter’s home page to make these discoveries still in 60 days, the investors should have a clause to get their money back.

To build a real business, let alone one worthy of $1 billion, you need to shock and amaze your users and customers. Twitter is a long way from that. The good news is that the fixes are INCREDIBLY easy to build.

I never go to the homepage of Twitter, but I would if I could discover talented people in categories that interested me first and than have some surprises thrown in. Curation is not a dirty word and it needs to be embraced by SOMEONE inside Twitter.

Robert Scoble took some time out from ranting about Twitter’s neglect of him to deliver some good follow suggestions in his most recent post . I followed quite a few for a trial.

Twitter should take the lead in getting the conversation and discovery going.

Comedy, Arts, Motivation, Sales, Finance, Marketplaces, Calssifieds, Dating…not just News. For all that Yahoo has done bad since 2000, what they did right from the get go is not a strategy to be shunned by Twitter. There is nothing wrong with being a media and discovery company while the bazillion dollar model shows itself.