@harrymccracken RIM needs to switch to Android and/or WP7. They make great handsets, just need a better platform. BBM on Android FTW!—
Mike Poullas (@mikepoullas) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Unlink divisions: hope 4 some successes (Enterprise Msg; BBM) to survive w x-platform s/w despite handset&PlayBk implosions—
Walt French (@WaltFrench) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Merge with Nokia.—
Sky Hussar (@skyhussar) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken less models and more difference between them, one with keyboard, one without and one with touch and keyboard (torch)—
Wim Schelfaut (@wim_s) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken position RIM to play to its strengths — data security, enterprise deployment, device mgmt + differentiate with services.—
Daniel Leslie (@dan_leslie) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Draw xy coordinates, and fit 1 BB phone in each quadrant. X & Y are key customer types & product features, etc.—
Justin Adams (@justinfadams) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken windows :)—
Manu Kumar (@ManuKumar) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Android.—
Matt Baxter-Reynolds (@mbrit) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken RIM should sell server biz to IBM, sell patents to Google, place former TAT team at Apple, and dissolve company.—
David Oliver (@davidmoliver) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken position RIM to play to its strengths — data security, enterprise deployment, device mgmt + differentiate with services.—
Daniel Leslie (@dan_leslie) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Fork Android a la Kindle Fire, build core BB apps on top of it.—
Jason Snell (@jsnell) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken people hate Blackberry devices but they would love the enterprise services on their own devices no matter which OS.—
Gurpreet Bedi (@grprtbedi) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken That sounds like a prescription for an orderly winding down of the business.—
Ed Bott (@edbott) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Sell the hardware business and focus on providing high end enterprise solutions like mail and BBM to other mobile OSes.—
Gurpreet Bedi (@grprtbedi) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken RIM shud build on niche as a corp device and work with enterprise SaaS i.e Salesforce to value add and justify CTOs trust—
Ameer Zulkifli (@ameerplusone) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken RE RIM They desperately need an iTunes competitor. Native music, movies and apps that sync seamlessly (& Better Appps)—
Derrick LeBlanc (@docleblanc126) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Step 1. Realize you can't compete with Android or iOS Step 2. Find the People who don't like those two. Step 3. Sell—
Joshua Johnson (@JoshuaJohnsonT) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Utilize the current management tools to support Droid, iPhone, and Windows phones. Become a Mobile Security Software firm—
G (@yourpersnlgeek) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken give complete creative control to The Astonishing Tribe—
Chris Baluzy (@cbaluzy) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Focus on 2-3 devices, give them zippy performance, get more people to develop apps for BlackBerry.—
Martin Pinnau (@martinpinnau) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Kill PlayBook +BBOS licensing plan; reduce product range; focus BBOS on biz/corp, use Android/WP for 'consumer'—
Andy Weir (@gcaweir) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken re RIM. Make access to Rim services ubiquitous. Building hardware is expensive. i.e. playbook. Far better to build an app—
John Wright (@fortyrunner) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Cut off all current devices and make something new.—
Deep Soni (@xDeepS) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken re RIM. Cut back product lines to Business and Consumer b/berries. Build a set of iOS, Android, Win mobile, OSX, Win apps.—
John Wright (@fortyrunner) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Hire executives that understand the position the company is in and are not already tainted by its corporate culture.—
Dan Seifert (@dcseifert) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken 100% focus on enterprise smartphone market via HW redesign. Better integration with enterprise tools than iPhone/Android.—
Eric Andersen (@eric_andersen) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken As CEO or RIM, I'd partner with Google on Android ASAP. Not going to survive on their own.—
Keith Thompson (@kdttaz) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken
1. Get new OS phone working
2. Get devs engaged, apps vital
3. Build tools to make life easier for devs
4. FEEDBACK & FIX—
bastien koert (@phpster) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Do what it takes to get products finished in a timely fashion so they work and can be released without delays or bugs.—
Laura (@lak611) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken ditch BBOS. adopt #windowsphone. differentiate around BBM, enterprises services and those awesome keyboard devices—
Vijay Vadlamani (@VJV87) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken approach Microsoft for port of their phone OS—
PiNT (@P1NT) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken … Not to mention standalone iOS and Android BBM apps—
Michael Ouzounian (@edwardcbear) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken cut losses, perhaps take playbook off the market. Then focus on restoring BB's image. Product lifecycles considered.—
DHimself (@thatdarryl) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken @iansherr I would close the gap between "what we can contribute to mobile" and "what we should contribute to mobile"—
Behzod Sirjani (@beh_zod) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Go back and reconsider if Android Player is going to be a great feature of your OS going forward. Then build a great OS.—
Jeremy Stanley (@JeremyDStanley) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken RIM needs to get good apps on the platform (Playbook, BB10). Bribe developers as needed. App selection sucks, quality poor.—
Chris Saldanha (@ChristoDeluxe) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Offer only 2 products. Design them to be the “serious” choice for business & government. Position competition as “toys.”—
Kevin Mercuri (@KevinMercuri) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken trim all the fact and get down and dirty like a startup again.—
Matthew Davis (@Matt_JDavis) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Focus on enterprise (Security, Integration, SAP, Adminstriationm…) try not to be (a 2nd grade) Apple.—
Stephan Schmidt (@codemonkeyism) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken license BBM to Nokia/Microsoft and push Windows Phone integrated services. You've gotta come up with a cash cow somehow.—
Michael Ouzounian (@edwardcbear) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Consolidate the company to focus on phones, group hardware, eliminate fragmentation, and use open standards for BIS and BBM.—
Harris Kleyman (@maclover009) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Forget America – sell what you can, including assets, and concentrate on international market.—
Charles Pinker (@cdpinker) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Switch to WP and make back end server licenses free. Outdated OS and expensive/complex server backend are the biggest probs.—
John Denver (@ntman68) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Get Meego.—
Manik (@Manik_K) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Innovate the hell out of something. That's all I got.—
Cynthia Schames (@CynthiaSchames) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Start producing Windows Phone hardware like Nokia.—
Paras Valecha (@ParasValecha) January 23, 2012

@harrymccracken Stop the PlayBook and get back to core competencies.—
Peter Cohen (@flargh) January 23, 2012

How do I feel about the major makeover which Twitter unveiled yesterday? Well, it’s been hard for me to come to any conclusions, at least when it comes to the iPhone version. For some reason, it’s refusing to show me my timeline and @replies. Some other folks are reporting problems, too, and the fixes they’ve suggested aren’t helping me. I presume it’s a bug that’ll get fixed.

(It’s also showing me an outdated list of my Direct Messages that’s missing the recent ones–a glitch I’ve been encountering on multiple platforms for a long time.)

From what I’ve been able to divine by using a secondary account, and by trying the mobile-Web version, the new Twitter looks…okay. The company clearly wants to make it more approachable to folks who aren’t already savvy Twitter addicts. As far as I can tell, I’ll still be able to get the stuff done that’s important to me. Even though some of what’s new–especially under the Discover tab–feels irrelevant.

(A new feature called Stories aggregates Tweets on a particular newsy topic. That sounds like it might be fun if I could choose the topic. But it’s a one-size-fits-all thing, so I’m getting Stories on David Stern and Chris Paul–even though I’m so disinterested in those guys that I barely know who they are.)

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber has a more critical look at the new Twitter which rightly points out that the new version loses all the genius of Tweetie, the third-party Twitter client that became the original official Twitter iPhone client. I’m such a fan of Loren Brichter, Tweetie’s inventor, that it’s kind of embarrassing, But now he’s gone from Twitter, and so, apparently, is his spirit. I wonder what he’s working on now?

As Gruber says, changes to the official version of Twitter aren’t a big deal as long as third-party clients continue to offer alternatives. He likes Tweetbot. I’m kind of perennially amateurish when it comes to Twitter: Most often, I use the Web interface or the iPhone and iPad apps. But I do like Hootsuite–and I can always retreat to it if I have any ongoing issues with the new Twitter.

With the 2012 campaign expected to cost candidates well over a billion dollars, it’s no surprise that companies that count on advertising are angling to get a slice of that huge pie. Twitter is one of them, and plans to market its advertising services to the campaigns thanks to a key hire of a former political marketing executive from Google.

Twitter told Politico that it plans to sell ads through features such as promoted tweets and trends. At least five campaigns have already signed on to the new offering, including Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign. Twitter declined to specify the other participants.

One thing it will not do is insert ads within user’s timeline, a new advertising option that it has been experimenting with over the past few months. It also plans to differentiate a political ad from a standard one: the ad will carry a small purple checkmark.

You won’t see the standard “I approve this message” tag on tweets. Twitter won’t display them directly with the tweet, however hovering over the tweet would show who purchased the advertising if the campaign decides to disclose it. (It should be obvious anyway, since the ads would direct to a URL or Twitter account where the identity would be disclosed, I’d guess).

I wonder if like TV and radio, Twitter will become a sea of political ads in the days before an election, with the candidates sniping at each other continuously. Let’s hope not.

The clever folks at TIME.com have also put together a Twitter list of feeds from all the blogs we chose, letting you follow all of them with one click–as I just did.

But I’m still fascinated by New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s latest New York Times Magazine column. Keller isn’t a Twitter fan. Actually, he thinks that it–and Facebook–may be bad for humanity. A few tidbits from his piece:

But my inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.

My mistrust of social media is intensified by the ephemeral nature of these communications. They are the epitome of in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, which was my mother’s trope for a failure to connect.

Following an argument among the Twits is like listening to preschoolers quarreling: You did! Did not! Did too! Did not!

I buy the idea that Keller is describing the Twitter he experiences. One of the defining things about the service is that it’s all kinds of things to all kinds of people. It all depends on who you follow and how you follow them.

(Come to think of it, that quality isn’t unique to Twitter. If you judge dead trees based on their use in The National Enquirer and Hustler, you’ll come to different conclusions than you would if you focus on, say, The New York Times.)

The Twitter I know isn’t a place of deep thinking, it’s true. But  it’s not devoid of thoughtfulness. It’s largely civil. And I learn things from the people I chat with–many of who are smarter than I am, at least on certain subjects–all the time.

I don’t want to make any assumptions about Keller’s understanding of Twitter based entirely on his own Twitter account–I imagine he’s reading the tweets of at least some of the numerous adept twitterers who work for him, such as David Carr, Jenna Wortham, and Nick Bilton. But it’s worth noting that he’s tweeted a total of twenty-one times and doesn’t seem to have engaged in any conversations with anyone–apparently everything has gone in one of his ears and out the other.

And here’s a telling tidbit from this column:

The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions. Unlike the virtual fireplace or that nesting pair of red-tailed hawks we have been live-streaming on nytimes.com, Twitter is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation. Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop, I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from . . . from . . . wait, what was I saying?

Interesting–one of the things I like about Twitter is that it’s not distracting and doesn’t demand my attention. I don’t think that the fact that Keller is using TweetDeck helps matters–it does, indeed, push Twitter in your face. Me, I go to Twitter–usually just by visiting Twitter.com, sometimes via TweetDeck–rather than having Twitter come to me. And I do so only when I have at least a few minutes to give it my undivided attention.

Like many things in life, Twitter has a touch of self-fulfilling prophecy about it. If you like Twitter, you’re more likely to explore it and learn to use it in a way that’s rewarding. If you don’t like Twitter, you’ll probably visit only briefly and stay on the outskirts, where you’re less likely to discover things that might appeal to you. Keller seems to be an outskirt-dweller; that doesn’t make him a dope or a bad person.

But just in case he’s interested in trying to discover the Twitter that some of us love, here are a few tips:

• Don’t drink from the firehose. If you use TweetDeck or have notifications turned on or spend much time reading random tweets, Twitter may have all the negative qualities that Keller associates with it. Me, I sip from Twitter. I don’t let it intrude into my other computing activities. I don’t have notifications turned on. I follow 2,238 people, but almost always zoom in on specific people, conversations, and/or topics.
• Don’t hang out with jerks and dummies. If everyone you encounter on Twitter is a jackass, you need to find better friends. Even if only one Twitter user out of a thousand is a solid citizen, that’s still about three hundred thousand people whose company you might enjoy.
• Tweet unto others as you’d have them tweet unto you. If your goal is to find people who use Twitter in a smart, thoughtful, polite, conversational, interesting way, do your damnedest to be smart, thoughtful, polite, conversational, and interesting. It won’t hurt, and might help.
• Make Twitter part of a balanced online diet. Especially if you’re a journalist. I throw out ideas on Twitter, then turn them into blog posts where I (and others) can dig in deeper. I begin other conversations on my blog, then continue them on Twitter. I follow links on Twitter that lead to interesting stuff elsewhere.
• Don’t want Twitter to be the things it isn’t. Sure, it’s usually ephemeral. Of course, it’s no substitute for forging deep relationships with other humans in contexts that aren’t limited to 140 characters. (Although I’ve eventually met plenty of people who I first encountered and liked on Twitter, and find I tend to like them in real life, too.) Every other means of personal and public interaction that predates Twitter still exists, and has things to offer that Twitter doesn’t.

I’m not saying that taking these steps will turn any Twitter doubter into a Twitter enthusiast. But they’ve always worked for me. If you try them and still think that Twitter is eroding the qualities that make us human…well, you just weren’t built to like Twitter. Did I mention yet that I’m okay with that?

The microblogging service has been experimenting with various methods of making money, most recently through its “Promoted Tweets,” which allowed advertisers to leapfrog to the top of the Trends list to feature a product or service through a tweet of their own. It also was reportedly considering promoting accounts themselves, although nothing much has come of that.

I hope that Twitter is mindful that the advertising they place on the site does not become disruptive to the experience itself. I’m starting to think it now may only be a matter of time before ads begin appearing in our feeds.

I also ask that Twitter considers clearly identifying ads as ads — it’s the right thing to do.

(Image from Tech Inspiration)