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Fri 24 Mar 2017 9:48PM

#BuyTwitter is going up for a vote – help us win!

DS Danny Spitzberg Public Seen by 136

Great news, birdies:

Thanks to you, Twitter has a chance to become a user-owned co-op. Imagine if the "people's news network" was democratically owned!

In April and May, Twitter shareholders will be voting on our resolution: to study the advantages of converting to democratic ownership. They’ll call the vote at the annual meeting at Twitter HQ, on May 24th or 25th. Most votes will made via proxy, especially for shareholders that have a large amount of stock in Twitter. Ideally, we win with 51% or more of the vote – and if we want to learn from this process and make a stronger proposal for 2018, we need at least 3%!

If we win this vote, Twitter will commission a report to consider a transition to a more equitable kind of shared ownership, something like the models that have made the Green Bay Packers, REI, and the Associated Press so popular, profitable, and trustworthy. Better information means better business decisions for shareholders.

Our small group of volunteer organizers has come a long way to get here. Our strategy for winning this vote is to run an awareness campaign. We’ll focus on a few big shareholders like the California pension fund, which value democratic ownership.

Want to help us win? Here’s how to get involved:

1) Follow https://twitter.com/BuyThisPlatform
2) Tweet your vision for a user-owned Twitter using #WeAreTwitter #BuyTwitter
2) Become a shareholder! You can attend the annual meeting at Twitter HQ, and vote! Buy a share of Twitter stock from a stockbroker, or take 5 minutes on https://robinhood.com or https://loyal3.com. Note: the deadline to buy stock and be counted as a shareholder is March 30th.

Want to get more involved? That’s great! This campaign goes live on Monday, April 10th. We need help building a new website, writing fresh analysis supporting our proposal, and getting featured in press and media. Please join our organizing group for a call on Wednesday, March 29th at 10am Pacific Time – RSVP at https://goo.gl/forms/36Bewf2Y64Wm2Wux2.

Excited? Have questions? Comment below, or email [email protected].

This small group of volunteer organizers has come a long way to get here. Thank you again for helping us get this far.

Onward!

D

Devin Fri 24 Mar 2017 9:57PM

Great to see this moving forward. I just bought 6 shares for under $100!

ES

Eugenia Siapera Fri 24 Mar 2017 10:22PM

Great news Danny! Can I share your message on Facebook?

DS

Danny Spitzberg Fri 24 Mar 2017 11:32PM

@eugeniasiapera as soon as we get the URL for the updated petition : )

For now, please RT https://twitter.com/BuyThisPlatform/status/845417588125458433 !!

TAM

Timothy A McDonald Sat 25 Mar 2017 2:00AM

This is fantastic news. Been a shareholder since their IPO.

CC

Chris Cook Sat 25 Mar 2017 9:20AM

I don't think this proposal goes far enough. Twitter owned by its users would be an advance on Twitter owned by pure rent-seekers but it's only a step in the right direction.

Ownership by users leaves all other stakeholders as 'costs' to be excluded in the usual 'least $ cost' way and also typically leads to the organisation being run for the benefit of management.

I believe Twitter can and should be co-owned by the staff & management who provide the Twitter platform and made it what it is.

Personally, I'd rather see a staff/management buyout FUNDED by Twitter users, and the development of a Platform Cooperative which is essentially a partnership between a cooperative of Twitter platform users and a Twitter platform service providers/developers.

I think that a proposal for a user funded management/staff Twitter buyout would have an infinitely greater chance of success, particularly when you consider the share ownership of current and past management & stiaff

NS

Nathan Schneider Sat 25 Mar 2017 3:15PM

I disagree with the focus on employees here. Twitter employees are a small segment of the broad public whom the platform impacts; they are also high-skilled, well-compensated professionals—much more so than the average user. Many of them are likely shareholders already. I certainly think a multi-stakeholder model would be fine, but to me the primary ambition is to secure public, user control over a platform that is essentially a public media utility, to ensure that the platform is accountable to the public it serves. Requiring people to meet the requirements of Twitter employment in order to have a say over the platform is, I think, an inappropriately high bar. User ownership seems to me much more appropriate, both from a business and ethical point of view.

DS

Danny Spitzberg Sat 25 Mar 2017 1:44PM

So, in other words, a multi-stakeholder co-op? With different ownership classes? Like, http://stocksy.com?

CC

Chris Cook Sat 25 Mar 2017 6:58PM

Hi Nathan

The two are not mutually exclusive.

In ny view, Shareholders and the sharing economy are fundamentally incompatible and the joint stock company (Corporation) is unsuitable as a vehicle for a utility whether genetically modified as a Coop or not.

ie shareholders don't share.

I agree completely that the users should have the right of ultimate veto but I believe that there are frameworks (eg a revenue sharing LLC ) whereby a Cooperative of users may genuinely align interests with a cooperative of staff & staff & management.

Getting there from here is the interesting part but with all due respect I think co-ownership will be superior in outcome to user ownership.

Best regards

Chris

DS

Danny Spitzberg Sun 26 Mar 2017 3:35PM

Yet another commentary on what kind of model might work best for #BuyTwitter: a law student at NYU says, a B-Corp. See https://twitter.com/NYUJLB/status/844580642725744641

JR

John Richmond Sun 26 Mar 2017 5:48PM

Hi Folks! I think a B-corps like we have in Canada - for example Beaus Brewery in Ottawa - can be superior to corporate ownership but nothing beats a cooperative - when done right. I like the co-ownership model (again, when it works) because so many workplaces underutilize workplace skills and knowledge in subservience to "higher" shareholder or bucreaucratic objectives (often both). Perhaps for a large membership we users would need a users council or union.

Speaking as both member and former board member of a large credit union one problem large co-ops have in Anglo countries is zero communication between members and the people who represent them. For co-ownership to work us the users it would require robust communication between users and representatives. Cheers! (for co-op beers) . BBe

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