My friend Tom Brammar sent this post to me this morning titled ‘Jack Dorsey’s master plan‘.

The gist:

What is Twitter? Well, for a certain demographic it seems to be the mobile app that they use on a daily basis more than any other (and much to president-in-wanting Zuckerberg chagrin any of the ones that are in Facebook’s stable). And this demographic, although much smaller than other social platforms, is wealthier, more educated and more likely to live in urban areas. So its a very useful advertising platform, and for a certain type of retailer or merchandise produce it’s catnip.

Can you see where this is going yet?

If Dorsey merged Square and Twitter he’d have a vertically integrated retail machine with phenomenal reach and power. For instance;

1. Integrate Square’s payment technology so your twitter handle becomes a payment account — send and receive payments instantly and for free with anyone

2. Allow purchasing for any business that has a Twitter account (i.e. almost every business)
3. Offer Square’s retailers and merchandise producers one of the world’s largest audience of wealthy, educated people

One of the massive screw-ups Twitter originally made was not recognising that a user’s Twitter handle had the potential to become one of main primary keys of the Internet. Facebook did and with their comprehensive API and their ‘Login with Facebook’ feature put themselves front and centre for most internet users. Twitter missed this completely and eventually shutdown their API — total disaster which arguably they’ve never recovered from.

By merging Square and Twitter Dorsey would put Twitter’s handle right back into play, making it the centre of a huge payment / business platform.

Back to me now…

I have long agreed that Twitter has underachieved as a financial protocol.

If Jack could make that happen and get more out of Twitter as a way to monetize ideas (send money, make trades, pick fantasy teams), not just throw ads at bad content, the combined companies could be worth $100 billion.