Hi, it’s Steven once again, still on book tour now back to newslettering. It’s been 2 weeks considering that you’ve heard me state that, initially, this weekly column– which has actually had its hands cleaned for 20 seconds prior to sending!– will be free for everybody to gain access to. Ultimately, just WIRED customers will get Plaintext as a newsletter. You’ll get to keep reading it in your inbox by signing up for WIRED (marked down 50%), and while doing so getting all our incredible tech coverage in print and online.
The Plain View
Two things everybody wants to avoid are Covid-19 and activist financier Paul Singer attempting to take over your company so he can fire you. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has crafted a plan to deal with Risk One– he has actually motivated employees to work from house— but it’s unclear what he’s going to do with Danger 2, as Singer has built up a significant share of Twitter and desires Dorsey out Singer does make the point that, under Dorsey, Twitter’s stock price and growth has actually underperformed, and that Twitter may take advantage of a full-time CEO, rather of one who splits time in between 2 public business (Twitter and Square) and a possible months-long vision quest to Africa to consider cryptocurrencies.
Because of this crisis in the Twitterverse, I started to question what things may have been like if an eventful choice in 2008 went the other way. That was when Facebook tried to buy Twitter. CEO Mark Zuckerberg had actually not yet improved his skills at breaking the will of creators who wished to remain independent; Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO at the time, recommended his board to reject the $500 million deal, despite the fact that the sum was two times the existing appraisal. What if the board had taken the money?
Here’s my variation of this counterhistory. Of all, Williams would have left right away. He is not a fan of Zuckerberg, and
