WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Future companies won’t look anything like the companies of today in the way they operate and scale, and this is a great example of future thinking.

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We live in odd times, mostly thanks no-thanks to politicians, but also because of new technology innovations and this news caught my eye for a reason that most people probably didn’t even think twice about, and that’s the news that Jack Dorsey doesn’t think that Twitter, which he just sold for $44 Billion to best buddy Elon Musk should be a company – he thinks it should be a protocol which then takes us into the weirdness of a company type called a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) that runs on the blockchain and in short can either run itself or be run and governed by its users who use the blockchain to vote on policies, strategies, and “other things.”

DAO’s are to conventional companies what radishes are to rockets – completely different.

Reacting to news of the takeover agreement on Twitter, Dorsey posted a link to the Radiohead song “Everything In Its Right Place,” and said Musk is the “singular solution I trust” to run the company he co-created in 2006.

“I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness,” he said.

On Monday, Twitter management accepted Musk’s offer to acquire the company and take it private at $54.20 a share.

The deal has attracted both scrutiny and praise from myriad voices ranging from senior political figures to Twitter’s own user base.

While Musk and his supporters see the takeover as a return to free expression on the internet, critics are concerned it will give the world’s richest man too much influence over online discourse.

Dorsey stepped down as Twitter’s CEO last year and has since shifted his focus to solely managing his payments company Block, formerly known as Square.

The Silicon Valley entrepreneur said his “biggest regret” was how Twitter operated as a company.

“It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model,” Dorsey said. “Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step.”

“In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter,” he added. “It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company.”

As far as the company goes, however, Dorsey says he’s in favor of Musk running things.

“Elon’s goal of creating a platform that is ‘maximally trusted and broadly inclusive’ is the right one,” he said, thanking Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal for “getting the company out of an impossible situation.”

“This is the right path… I believe it with all my heart,” Dorsey added.

Dorsey, a vocal supporter of Bitcoin, has previously envisioned the creation of decentralized social media protocols to address the problem of a handful of powerful tech companies controlling the most popular online services. An initiative called Bluesky was set up in 2019 with funding from Twitter to develop the standards to bring this vision to life.

On Monday, Bluesky issued a series of tweets clarifying its relationship with Twitter in light of Musk’s deal to acquire the company.

Though backed by Twitter, Bluesky is an “independent company” and its funding from the tech giant is “not subject to any conditions except one: that Bluesky is to research and develop technologies that enable open and decentralized public conversation,” the project said.

So, will Musk take the company private and end up turning it into a protocol? The odds are favourable.

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