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Twitter investor Chris Sacca has gone into great detail — literally — to tell the microblogging site what it should do.
In an 8,500-word unapologetic blog post on Wednesday titled, “What Twitter Can Be,” Sacca offers numerous praises and critiques of Twitter. It’s a follow up to his mere 1,100-word post last week dubbed, “I bleed Aqua.”
Sacca believes that Twitter is improving but said the social network “has failed to tell its own story ” to investors and its 302 million monthly active users. He offers three changes that users, new, old and returning would find engaging:
“Make Tweets effortless to enjoy, make it easier for all to participate, and make each of us on Twitter feel heard and valuable,” he said. “Done right, countless users new and old will find Twitter indispensable, use Twitter more, see great ads, buy lots of stuff, and make the company much more money along the way.”
He also told CNBC that Twitter would be an “instant fit” for Google if the search giant acquired it.
The comments from Sacca, who said he’s put more money into Twitter shares than “any other investor in the world,” came ahead of the company’s hour-long annual shareholder meeting Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco. His views probably echo other investors as questions about whether CEO Dick Costolo’s job is on the line are resurfacing.
Twitter’s stock has fallen as much as 25 percent since the company said in April it had lowered its full-year 2015 financial expectations. While seeing a spike in monthly active users from 288 million to 302 million in the first quarter, Twitter reported sales of $436 million, missing analyst estimates of $457 million. Profit was 7 cents a share, while analysts estimated 5 cents.
The company now projects revenue between $470 million to $485 million.
Costolo has been working the past few months to expand the site’s appeal beyond the hipsters, geeks and newshounds who comprise much of the microblogging service’s user base. He’s made it easier for new users to sign on and build followers, added video-sharing capabilities, and reorganized the home page to make it more inviting and easier to search.
Costolo said during last week’s Code Conference in Southern California that Twitter is still trying to build its audience by showing tweets to others outside of Twitter including on platforms like Flipboard.
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“People believe the strategy,” he said. “They buy it. But we have to show that, ‘It’s great you reached a billion people on and off your site — help me understand how you’re going to monetize that. Show me how you’re going to monetize that.’ Those are things we know and we need to show them how we do it.”
Sacca said in his blog that Twitter has disappointed Wall Street more often than not and its confidence in the management has diminished since it went public in 2013. He said Twitter has to be bolder, take huge risks, deeply question key assumptions and launch new features early and often.
“It needs to place more bets with potentially oversized payoffs. It needs to question aspects of Twitter it has taken for granted. It needs to operate with smaller teams that require less permission to make change happen,” Sacca said. “Twitter can afford to build the wrong things. However, Twitter cannot afford to build the right things too slowly.”
During his CNBC interview Wednesday, Sacca said that a possible acquisition of Twitter by Google would be “fantastic” for both companies.
“This is the thing that Google has never had,” Sacca said. “They’ve never understood social (media), they’ve never understood those personal interactions. This bolts in right cleanly.”
Sacca also said in his blog that while Twitter provides great content among its estimated 500 million daily tweets, it could be much easier to use.
“So it’s time to ditch the assumptions that: 1.) recent tweets are always the best tweets. 2.) Only the people we follow post the best tweets,” he said.
Sacca added that features such as Periscope and Curator have enhanced Twitter, but introducing a “Live” event steam, “Channels” (oriented by topics, location and popularity) and a “Save Button” could help even more.
“Going forward, Twitter should boldly push the envelope of these new explorations and try evolving the core product in three directions,” he said.
As for Costolo, Sacca told CNBC that he wasn’t calling for his resignation.
“If they execute on the kinds of ideas that I put out there, which by the way aren’t my ideas alone, then nobody will be asking those questions about Dick (Costolo) in the months ahead,” he said. “If this is not the stuff they’re working on, and they can’t get this stuff done, then I think the board is going to act in the interest of shareholders.
“As I note in the (blog), I am optimistic about the direction they are moving in with a few of their recent product launches, and I just hope they go farther and faster with that,” he added.
Update, 3:30 p.m. PT: Adds Sacca’s comments from CNBC interview.
