Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Measuring Your Twitter Influence
Who Is Andrew Parker?
Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO
My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp

Fred Wilson: The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point (My Comment)

"Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience." 

There you go. That has been my point. Twitter needs to eat into its ecosystem. Windows did that. Bill Gates' last threat was he was going to incorporate antivirus software right into Windows. Good thing for Norton that he retired instead.

And Twitter needs to appeal more to the mainstream users. The first page is not welcoming for new users. For one, it is cluttered. Tumblr could teach here.

One way to eat into the ecosystem is to go on a buying spree. For that you need money. You get that money by going public. (Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO)

You should hire me and put me to work on this. (Who Is Andrew Parker?)

Don't get me wrong. Blogger remains my favorite social media platform (My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp) And my enthusiasm for Twitter is well documented. (Measuring Your Twitter Influence) It is not possible I lack respect for Evan Williams. But I think I can help.

Hire me for a year, and let this be my first project. :-) Seriously.

10 years back a lot of people wanted to go online so they could get Hotmail. Twitter has to reach that level of appeal.

" I think the time for filling the holes in the Twitter service has come and gone."

True. But not true. 2009 was Twitter's year. True. 2010 is the year for location, random connections and the inbox, as I see it so far. That list might look different in six months, I don't know.

But Twitter could still do it. It needs to eat into its ecosystem.

Right now I feel like Bill Clinton felt when he was applying for colleges. The dude applied to just one college: Georgetown in DC. He wanted to be in DC, Georgetown was a good college, and it had a strong foreign service program. Right now when I have decided to get the first real job of my life and to postpone work on my startup by about a year, I find myself wanting to work at Union Square Ventures and no place else. The more I think about it, the more I want to do it. There are currents and counter currents of thoughts.

• Fred Wilson is too big for me. 
• They might not even hire me. 
• They will definitely not hire me. 
• What am I thinking?

Some of the counter currents:

• What if I end up being a VC in a year? That would be horror. I have enormous respect for VCs, but I don't want to be one. 30 years from now I want to be known for a company I created.
• What if it feels like a corporate job? What if it is not entrepreneurial enough?
• There must be holes in my abilities. There most definitely are if the idea is to find a photocopy of Andrew Parker. Andrew Parker's tumblog is definitely better than mine.

What I want.

• I do want it, and I am going to do my best this month to try and get it. But I am not going to email Fred, although I have emailed him several times on frivolous topics like, well, Happy Holi Fred Wilson. (Happy Holi) If they want me, they will email me. If they get someone else, I will read about it on Fred's blog that I have taken to reading daily. His mantra: blog daily. My mantra: read daily.
• Doing my best is to put out a series of blog posts at my blog. They are not asking for a resume, they are asking for a blog. That is insurance that this is going to feel like a startup, and not some ossified corporation.
• Words like guru, don come to mind. Fred Wilson is a big shot who is hugely accessible. I mean, the guy has a blog that is so good he could be mistaken for a pro blogger. 
• I want a decent six figure salary.
• Can I do 10-6? I don't need a lunch break. But I am not going to be happy working only 40 hours a week. I have that personality type that wants to work long hours. But I like flexibility in how I spend some of those hours. What is the USV version of Google's 20% time? Let me spend 20% of my time going to events in town and networking in the industry, hanging out with startup people. 
• Take Twitter public in 2010 before Facebook. I want that to be my first project. If I fail, I am just a guy with a six figure salary. If I succeed, I want a percentage. So if USV owns 10% of Twitter - I don't know what it owns, it is very likely less - I want to end up owning 1% of Twitter, something like that.
• Invest in Chatroulette, help it avoid the Twitter mistakes, turn it into the leading Random Connections service.
• Help take FourSquare to the next level.
• Find the next FourSquare. 
• These are some of the things I would want to work on.
• Andrew's title was Analyst. I want mine to be Junior Partner. He has a better tumblog than I do, but other than that I bring more to the table. 
• It might be a good idea to hire one a half people plus an intern. One would be me. 
• I have never had health insurance. Push ups have been my idea of health insurance so far. If I am hired, to me it is going to feel like Obama made Fred Wilson give me health insurance. Okay, okay, that sentence sounds convoluted, but I did put numerous hours into Obama 08. (Jupiter And Obama, Switching To Obama)
• The tweet is to the web what the atom is to the universe. Twitter has to prove that. Twitter is lucky that there is no Gowalla around, but it sure needs to feel the time pressure. 

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Who Is Andrew Parker?

Blog Daily is Fred Wilson's mantra. Many people know him as a venture capitalist. I know him primarily as a blogger. He is my favorite solo blogger by far. So a few minutes back I showed up at his blog, and this is what I saw.

Fred Wilson: Bidding Andrew Goodbye

That blog post linked over to this one, also written by Fred Wilson.

Union Square Ventures: Bidding Goodbye To Andrew

By the time I was going through the comments at that blog post, I realized I was already following this guy on Tumblr without realizing he worked for Union Square Ventures. I found him through Nina who I found through Scoble.

Andrew Parker: ... Boston Bound, Leaving USV And Next Steps

Fred Wilson, July 2006: Looking For The Right Person
Brad Burnham, August 2006: Welcome Andrew Parker
Charlie O'Donnell, July 2006: Leaving Union Square Ventures: My Other Name Is An Avatar ....

Right now I am in a mood to do round 1 work for my startup part time while working a job. I have sent out a few feelers seeking a social media job of some kind. But that might feel like a deviation from my path. I am not aspiring to be a media guy, social or otherwise. This USV job might be a dream job for someone with my aspirations, but I am not sure they might go for me. And, curiously, I would like to start out by giving them some reasons why they should not hire me.

1. I am going to be working on my startup idea part time, on the side. I am not walking away from it.
2. I might stick around for about a year max. So if you are looking for someone who will be with you at least two years, I am not your guy. But when I leave it will be because I have decided to go full time with my startup, there will be no other reason. I'd give you a month's notice.
3. I don't have a good track record of putting up with authority. I have never really had a corporate job. Even a job has to feel entrepreneurial to me. Can't be a cog.
4. I am not a white male. There was this group photo somewhere I saw last year, or maybe before, it had all the top young tech entrepreneurs in town. The first thing I noticed was every single one of them was a white guy. I recognized only one, the MeetUp CEO Scott, a friend. Now that I also know Sam Lessin, the Dropio guy, I am pretty sure he was also in there. I have a pretty sophisticated understanding of race. I was one of Obama's earliest people in the city, and I got to become friends with many of the top Obama volunteers in town in all five boroughs, many of them white. But then I am used to not being part of groups with total cultural overlaps with me since I was 10. Makes me very individualistic as a result. I am big on personal space in my own way. In Nepal it was ethnicity in a boarding school environment - talk about The Other, in Kentucky it was race.

Some of the reasons I might like the job:

1. I a-m looking for a job. If I get it, round 1 feels like so much less pressure. I am not having to pay myself a salary, however low, through my startup. I might even save some money and pump that into my startup. I don't need much.
2. This would be a dream job.
3. Going to tech events in town is not cutting it for me no more. I need something stronger.
4. This USV experience might be the detox I need after a few years of hard core, cutting edge political work.
5. The tech startup ambience, the people you will meet, the expanded personal network.
6. Getting a better feel for the NY tech  ecosystem.
7. Fred Wilson. If I so enjoy interacting with him at his blog, that enjoyment must be greater by so many degrees in person. This guy is as good as they come. In the world of movies, they have Scorsese. In the world of venture capital, they got AVC. This guy is a legend in the making. I have higher regard for him than VCs with more money than him. He is really good at what he does. He was born to be a VC. (Fred Wilson's Insight)
8. I am on the L line. They are on the L line. It only struck me a few days back that USV is perhaps named after Union Square. For the longest time I thought, so the Square is the square like in geometry, what is Union?
9. I like it that they are a small team. Three is the Google number. Three seems to be the USV number. Google works on the premise that three is as big as a team should get. 
10. I absolutely am loving it that they are asking not for a resume but a blog. This blog will do it for them. Well then, here goes. You have this blog. And you can click over to all my social media presences from this blog itself. Give me a job, if not at least give me some page hits. :-) Best, make me an offer. 

This is what I looked like when I showed up in town summer of 2005.

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