Turns Out Square Isn't Secure Enough For Its Big Fancy New Partner, VISA (V, PAY)

Mobile payments startup Square plans to make all of its dongles encrypt credit card data on the fly, a Square exec said at a conference. This is after Square said in response to accusations from competitor Verifone that it doesn't need to encrypt credit card data.

Square is doing this to conform to Visa's new set of mobile application best practices. Those new best practices were released yesterday, just as it was announced that Visa made a strategic investment in Square. So in other words, Visa made Square add encryption to its dongle.

This must be a bummer for Square, because it has to design and build new dongles all over again. Moreover, we assume that the chips that will be needed to encrypt credit card data will be more costly than what the current dongle has, which should be costly -- Square gives away the dongles and makes money from a commission on each transaction.

Just to be clear: even without encrypting credit card data, Square is by all accounts fully compliant with all industry regulations. So it's not like there's this huge gaping security hole with Square. But their new big and  important partner evidently feels that they have to beef up their security.

Now You Should Read: Why Square Will Need To Ditch The Dongle →

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See Also:

• Visa Invests Big Money In Square, Even Though Square Probably Wants To Kill Visa
• PayPal Buys Another Startup To Beat Google, Apple And Square In The Mobile Payments Race
• Square COO Explains Why The Web Is Dead

Turns Out Square Isn't Secure Enough For Its Big Fancy New Partner, VISA (V, PAY)

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How Twitter Got Desperate Enough To Hire Two Part-Timers To Lead Product

Twitter's new executive chairman and product leader, Jack Dorsey, is also the fulltime CEO of another startup, Square.

Twitter's new director of product management, Satya Patel, will also be splitting his professional time with another concern – Battery Ventures, where he'll continue working as an advisor to portfolio companies.

Is Twitter really in such desperate shape that it's willing to hire product leaders who want to maintain other jobs?

In a word: Yes.

Here's an anecdote to illustrate how badly things are messed up over there right now.

Remember that whole "#Dickbar" controversy, where Twitter updated its iPhone app so that a "QuickBar" showing Twitter trends and ads would show up in every users Twitter stream?

People hated it.

They hated it for two reasons – one less fair than the other.

The unfair reason: the QuickBar put ads in the Twitter stream. That's unfair because you had to know ads were coming.

The fair reason: the QuickBar put Twitter's useless, crass, and irrelevant "trends" in every user's face. 

Instapaper creator and UI genius Marco Arment hit this complaint hard, writing, "It’s a news ticker limited to one-word items, lacking any context, broadcasting mostly topics that I don’t understand, recognize, or care about. It’s nonsensical. At worst, it can offend. At best, it will confuse."

Anyway, the #DickBar was not good. But that's not the point. Even companies with good product teams launch sucky products sometimes.

The fact that indicates Twitter's whole product process is in bad shape is this: A source briefed on the ordeal tells us that the QuickBar was launched, essentially out of the blue, by a junior product manager – without any review from the company's senior leadership. Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO and #DickBar namesake, is said to have been livid after the ensuing controversy.

Whoops.

How did #DickBar happen?

Apparently, Twitter has a very horizontal org-structure. The reason Twitter has such a structure, say observers, is because "that's the way Facebook does it."

Of course, what Facebook has and Twitter does not, is Mark Zuckerberg – a senior executive and product visionary who is comfortable getting elbow deep in product development. In fact, after Ev Williams stepped down as Twitter CEO last fall – and his top product lieutenant, Jason Goldman, followed suit – Twitter had almost zero product leadership at all.

The good news is that, in Jack Dorsey and Satya Patel, Twitter now has that kind of leadership.

The bad news is that it has it on a part-time basis.

We reached out to Twitter to discuss this story but we never heard back.

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See Also:

• Twitter In Negotiations To Bring Jack Dorsey Back As Chief Product Officer
• HERE IT IS: Jack Dorsey's Three-Part Plan To Fix Twitter
• LOOMING DISASTER: Jack Dorsey's Return To Twitter -- The SAIcast

How Twitter Got Desperate Enough To Hire Two Part-Timers To Lead Product

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Hey, Twitter, Enough Of This Crap About "Here's How You Can Use The Word Tweet"

Twitter has issued new rules about how the rest of us can use the words "Twitter" and "Tweet," MG Siegler of TechCrunch tells us.

And the rules are right out of a handbook on how to take yourself way too seriously.

For example:

• Make sure that if mentioning “Tweet,” you include a direct reference to Twitter (for instance, “Tweet with Twitter”) or display the Twitter marks with the mention of “Tweet.”

And: 

Naming your Application or Product, Applying for a Domain

Do: Use Tweet in the name of your application only if it is designed to be used exclusively with the Twitter platform.

Don’t: Use Tweet in the name of your application if used with any other platform.

In other words, if you're TweetDeck, a company that was created shortly after the company called Twitter and helped to make Twitter the powerhouse that it is today, you have to change your name to, say, StatusUpdateDeck, because Twitter's lawyers now say they own the word "Tweet."

Now, Twitter's lawyers will no doubt say that what they're doing here is just laying claim to company property, the same way "Xerox" or "Kleenex" or "Google" might do.

But that's crap.

Companies like "Xerox" and "Kleenex" and "Google" invented the names that later became generic nouns and verbs. In other words, the terms started as company trademarks and then entered the general lexicon.

Twitter, meanwhile, just co-opted words that had existed happily for hundreds of years before its founders were even born, and it's now trying to convert these words into company property.

Yes, Twitter's lawyers will say here that they're only trying to control the CAPITALIZED forms of these words, but that's still weenie-like.  As MG Siegler notes: "This would seem to be all about Twitter gaining the trademark to the word “tweet”, which they’ve been trying unsuccessfully to do. They also later note, “Please remember to capitalize the T in Twitter and Tweet!” As a commenter notes, it’s funny that they don’t even capitalize it in their own logo!" 

(And are Twitter's lawyers really going to be cool if "TweetDeck" changes its name to "tweetdeck"? Somehow we doubt it.)

More importantly, this whole "we own and can dictate how English words are used" thing just runs so counter to the grass-roots power-to-the-people "open" ethos that made Twitter what it is today. 

Yes, by imposing ever-greater rules on how application providers can interact with the service, and by co-opting some of the most popular third-party applications, Twitter has already screwed over some of the folks who initially supported it and begun its transformation into a "CORPORATION." But those moves were foreshadowed and expected, and they were arguably necessary to the company's long-term financial success.

Trademarking the word "Tweet," meanwhile, has nothing to do with the company's long-term financial success (unless part of the financial model is expected to be suing people for trademark infringement.)  It's just annoying.

So, we urge you to rethink this one, Twitter. 

If you want to trademark the company-name "Twitter," fine.  But lay off "Tweet."  And stop trying to dictate how people can and can't use words that have been communal property for centuries.  It's way too early--and your company is still way too cool--to let lawyers take over.

See Also: Here's Who Just Got Screwed By Twitter

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