Twitter CEO Plans to Develop a Decentralized Social Media Standard

In a tweet made by Twitter’s CEO earlier today, Dorsey said that Twitter plans to fund a “small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers.” The end goal is to create a new decentralized standard which presumably will be for all social media. Twitter will be putting its weight behind the project and will, if successful, adopt this standard, someday.

Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵

— jack (@jack) December 11, 2019

Bringing Twitter Back to Its Roots

Early on, he writes, “Twitter was so open… that many saw its potential to be a decentralized internet standard like SMTP (email protocol).” However, due to recent commitments, it has become more centralized. Dorsey doesn’t dispute that these changes were necessary — but he believes that it’s now time to go back to Twitter’s roots.

Dorsey’s thinking on this topic seems to be captured by the phrase “protocols, not platforms,” as he mentions in a tweet. All of this will be open-source.

Recently we came across @mmasnick’s article “Protocols, Not Platforms” which captures a number of the challenges and solutions. But more importantly, it reminded us of a credible path forward: hire folks to develop a standard in the open. https://t.co/1kH7UcaNKO

— jack (@jack) December 11, 2019

Jack Dorsey’s Interest in Bitcoin

Many in the cryptocurrency community have responded positively to the news and view it as an extension of Dorsey’s love for Bitcoin. In a statement made in June, he said that Bitcoin’s “principles, brand, and resilience” makes it the “ideal currency of the internet.” 

Throughout 2019, Dorsey has been one of Bitcoin’s loudest champions. Last month, BeInCrypto reported on the Twitter CEO going to Ghana for a Bitcoin meetup. Dorsey is also the CEO of Square, which supports Bitcoin through its Cash App. In October, Square posted on its Medium page asking for designers to help bring Bitcoin to the mainstream. 

In short, it seems that Dorsey’s commitment to decentralized social media is a logical extension of his love of Bitcoin. We can likely expect Bitcoin to be integrated in some way with this new initiative announced today.