杰克归来：多西畅谈对Twitter的规划

    近来，硅谷传得最热的一条新闻恐怕就是“杰克回来了。”

    当然，这里的“杰克”是指Twitter的创造者兼联合创始人杰克•多西。多西——自然是通过Twitter——证实，他将重返自己构思并于2006年创建的这家公司，担任执行董事长，负责整个产品开发。

    这条消息刚刚传出后不久，多西就抽空现身哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University）。此前很多媒体都曾报道，2008年，正当这家社交网站风生水起之时，多西被迫辞去Twitter首席执行官一职，由曾经的哥们、联合创始人伊万•威廉斯接任。（威廉斯则在去年10年离职，让位给时任首席运营官的迪克•卡斯特罗。）最近，多西向《名利场》（Vanity Fair）表示，这件事让他感觉就像“被人击中要害”。

    多西认为自己的回归是人心所向，而且他并不后悔自己早些年的行为。[一些人推测，多西当年离职多少与其缺乏沟通和管理技能有关。多西之前接受《财富》（Fortune）采访时曾提到这方面的不足，不过他表示自己已比当年有了进步。]

    多西表示：“回过头来，我对这件事看得更清楚了，但我决不后悔。而且我创立了Square，它可能将比肩 Twitter，甚至比Twitter更具影响力，这也算因祸得福。”

    多西除了在Twitter任职外，还将继续留任Square的首席执行官。后者是一家移动支付领域的新创企业，其业务是利用软件狗将用户的iPhone、iPad、Android等移动设备转变为信用卡交易工具。事实上，Square发展得相当棒：目前约有100名员工；每天通过其软件进行的交易金额超过100万美元；最近还获得了2750万美元的投资，公司估值因此达到2.4亿美元。

    而对于Twitter，多西承认还要很多事要做。

    多西表示：“我认为最大的挑战是打造天衣无缝的用户体验，以及让用户能从多种角度获得信息。”如果说有一件事特别令多西担忧，那肯定是眼下数量繁多的第三方Twitter客户端，例如Hootsuite、Tweetdeck等。

    “这些客户端都在用不同的方式做不同的事。但是，假如用户登陆应用程序商店，搜索Twitter，然后发现有100多种不同的Twitter客户端，都能用不同的方式做不同的事。那么他将非常困惑，这恐怕不是最佳用户体验。对于开发者而言，在Twitter上开发东西的乐趣也要比纯粹开发客户端大得多。”

    多西并未明确指出这里的“东西”到底是什么。不过他认为仍然还有许多潜在的服务和产品值得挖掘，它们可能与Twitter相关，也可能无关，这可能并非什么了不起的新技术，而是将地理位置识别、自定义过滤等现有技术结合，就像Instagram管理照片，以及Foursquare处理饭店、酒吧点评一样。

    多西上任后的首要任务将集中在以下几方面：了解拥有450多名员工的Twitter的近况；有哪些方面需要改进；使Twitter的用户体验更加贴近大部分用户，事实上，80%的Twitter用户使用该产品主要是为了消费信息而非传播信息。而且毫无疑问，多西还会参与Twitter的广告和市场活动，要知道，这家公司在市场推广上的花费少得可怜。[例如，多西自己承认在过去四年，Twitter仅仅花了1万美元在市场推广上，而且这笔钱全都投到了2007年在美国奥斯汀举行的SXSW大会上。]

    谈及将来，多西认为未来5年最大的技术挑战是如何实时提取相关信息。

    “对于Twitter而言，我们需要开发一种技术，能够为用户提取最相关和最有意义的信息，这仍然是一个很大的挑战。用户必须关注所有账号，但有时仍会漏掉和自己有重大关联的信息。我们能用技术解决这个问题，而且肯定会解决，只是难度仍然很大。”

    2亿多Twitter用户将拭目以待。硅谷也将密切关注。当企业赞助人认为创始人对公司而言可有可无、无足轻重时，创始人不得不奋起反抗，而现在他们学到了一招。

    译者：项航

    The news buzzing all around Silicon Valley is probably one and the same: "@jack is back."

    @jack is, of course, Twitter creator and co-founder Jack Dorsey, who confirmed, via Twitter, naturally, that he's returning to the social network he cooked up and founded in 2006, leading overall product development from his perch as Executive Chairman.

    Hot on the heels of the news, Dorsey took some time out to appear at Columbia University earlier this morning. As was widely reported, Dorsey was pushed out of his role as Twitter CEO in 2008, just as the social network was gathering steam, replaced by once-pal and co-founder Evan Williams. (Williams himself stepped down last October making way for COO Dick Costolo to take the top spot.) The move was something Dorsey described to Vanity Fair recently as being "punched in the stomach."

    Dorsey doesn't view his return as anything but a welcome one, and he doesn't regret any of his actions over the last few years. (Some have speculated his removal then was due, at least in part, to a relative lack of communication and managerial skills, a weakness Dorsey has alluded to in previous interviews with Fortune, and something he says he's improved upon since.)

    "I have a greater context for it, but I would not change anything," he reflected. "And one amazing thing that came out of it was that we created this company called Square, which has the potential to have just as large an impact, if not greater, than Twitter."

    Dorsey will work both at Twitter and remain CEO of Square, the mobile payments start-up that turns your mobile device -- iPhone, iPad, Android device -- into a credit card transaction machine with the help of a dongle. For all intents and purposes, the Square part of the equation is doing well: the staff now hovers around 100 employees, conducts $1 million-plus worth of daily transactions and recently raised $27.5 million that valued the company at $240 million.

    As for Twitter, Dorsey admitted a lot needs to be done.

    "I think the biggest challenge is building a cohesive user experience and enabling and allowing for multiple views," he said. If there's one thing in particular he's concerned about, it's the myriad of third party clients out there: Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and so on.

    "They're all doing different things in different ways, but it doesn't necessarily provide the best user experience to go to the app store, search for Twitter, and see a hundred different Twitter clients that all do different things in different ways and confuse the user experience. As a developer, there's far more interesting stuff to build on top of Twitter than just purely a client."

    What that "stuff" entails Dorsey isn't entirely sure about, but he thinks there's a lot of potential in services and products, both Twitter-related and beyond, that aren't significantly new tech, but combine current technologies, like geolocation and user-filtering, as Instagram manages with photos, and Foursquare does with restaurant and bar reviews.

    His first few months in the redefined role will focus heavily on surveying what's going on within the 450-person strong company, what needs to be fixed, and making the Twitter experience more accessible to the 80% of users who primarily use it for consuming information instead of disseminating it. And no doubt he'll also have a hand in the company's advertising and marketing efforts, the latter of which have remained pretty lean. (For instance, Dorsey admits the company has spent just $10,000 in marketing over the last four years or so, and all of that was at SXSW in 2007.)

    Moving forward, he thinks the next great big tech challenge for the next five years will be extracting information in a relevant way in real time.

    "At Twitter, we need to build technologies that surface what's most relevant and most meaningful to you, and that's still a very large challenge. You have to follow all these accounts, and sometimes you miss Tweets that were extremely relevant for you. We can solve that through technology and we will solve that, but it is going to be quiet difficult."

    Twitter's 200-plus million user base will be watching. So will all of Silicon Valley, where company founders everywhere just got an arrow in their quiver for when they have to defend themselves from backers who think they are replaceable or inessential to the companies they helped dream up in the first place.