Twitter Inc (TWTR): What It Can Learn From Square

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Twitter adopted a new practice making it more transparent, thanks to the digital payments company Square. The micro-blogging firm started sharing unmodified notes from engineering meetings within the company, a concept quite common in Square, says a report from Business Insider.

Customs that Twitter can adopt

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square as well as interim CEO Twitter is surely the man behind this nice cross-company cultural exchanges. As Dorsey co-founded both the company’s, but his main operational emphasis was towards Square since the last few years, where he introduced some unique corporate culture concepts, and sharing unmodified notes, is one of those. A report from Business Insider lists some more customs that Twitter can adopt from Square;

Making employees feel important, every quarter, the board of directors organize a meet to look into the operations of the company. The key points of discussions such as product planning and key business metrics, are sent to every executive in advance, and after the board meeting employee’s feedback and queries are welcomed.

Square adopts a unique way of working in which executives along with their team are supposed to answer some key questions every week. Two most asked questions are; What are we not talking about? And how do we feel? The answer is then shared among all the employees.

Square even makes efforts to keep interns happy. After an intern is done with the duty, the firm does two things. First, ask them to share their proudest accomplishments, and secondly make a wish. For instance, one of the interns asked for a verified Twitter account. However, the most demanded wish is to be invited to the Square holiday party, says the report.

Twitter – Testing products in real-world

Square develops an in-house coffee shop to ensure the latest retail payment features are working properly. The in-house coffee shop imitates the real-world retail set up to beta test software and hardware products.

For instance, before revealing its latest wireless credit card reader at Apple’s developers’ conference in June, Square tested the technology for several weeks at its in-house shop.

In another unique custom, Square employees are expected to work some shifts in nearby cafes and restaurants to better understand a user’s need and the actual performance of their products. For instance, Alyssa Henry, Engineering head took an initiative and worked at Souvla, the popular Greek sandwich restaurant in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley.

Apart from these, there are more fun and unique customs at Square. Adopting some of these will really be very helpful for Twitter. Going forward, we may see atleast some of these customs at Twitter, provided Dorsey becomes the full-time CEO at Twitter.

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