Contributor: Nubi Kayode is tech savvy and very interested in social media and how it affects lives – business, governance, education, health, etc.A big fan on the handshake between business and technology and a lover of expressive forms of art and music. You can follow him on twitter – @NubiKayode if you are a fan of the social layer, or check out his blog – Nuubee’s Place

 

Silicon Valley is my Disney World, and I have always been fascinated by stuff like tech startup logos, ad campaigns, business model and management style. A few have wowed me, and others have gotten shrugs out of me as far as innovation is concerned.

Yes, Facebook is super cool, and perhaps the only social network, and Pinterest is really a miracle. Zynga a successful parasite, and LinkedIn just won’t give way for any other professional social network – even facebook;  but there are somethings about Twitter that just don’t tick.

Here’s 3 of 9 of them:

Management

I don’t know if there is any other management in Silicon Valley as mysterious as that of Twitter. For one, it’s hard to place who really founded twitter, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams, or Biz Stone, as there are many co-founders who walk in and out of the board room. Perhaps the common names associated with Twitter include Jack Dorsey (Executive Chairman), and Dick Costolo, former COO, and current CEO, there is still a queue of top managers, until of recent, when the board room experienced a mass exodus. I sure wouldn’t be surprised if they all come walking in again after a few months, although, this is less likely with Costolo and Dorsey at the helm of affairs.

 

Neutrality

The world is a global village – or so the cliche goes, but even with collaboration a key feature in tech operations, many companies and startups end up picking sides. A good example is Zynga. It’s on many platforms such as MySpace, Tagged, Bebo, Friendster, Google+, Orkbut, Yahoo! and the iPhone, but you don’t need a soothsayer to know that Zynga owes allegiance to Facebook. What about Twitter? I tried to search for the closest ally, but found none. Twitter is somewhat the most neutral and unbiased tech company, but that does not mean it can’t choose to take sides, especially with the big boys at the White House.

 

Gov 2.0 Ready

Some of Twitter’s bragging right include: Toppling Regimes, Catalyzing Revolutions, among others. Just recently Jack Dorsey won a few awards (incl. The Crunchies by TechCrunch), in the line that Twitter had grown from just being a Web 2.0 tool for fun, and marketing, to being a checker for governments – especially the democratic. Going  onto the local level, hashtags such as #OccupyNigeria and #FuelSubsidyRemoval have gone a long way to bringing ‘people’ together to demand good governance from those placed in office. The #dodge and #answer hashtag were recently used in Flock The Vote – Presidential candidate debate for the Republican Party. 

 

Strange Huh? Watch out for the next set of 3 Strange Things in upcoming posts. I do have 6 more for twitter, so that’s two more posts before moving on to other stuff in the Silicon Valley, as well as the Nigerian Tech ecosystem.

 

Adi Bye Bye