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Twitter's post-IPO honeymoon is over. The company posted a surprise profit, though it took a one-time loss of about a half-billion dollars, largely for going public. Worse yet, there are a litany of questions about why the company missed growth targets.

CEO Dick Costolo had a tough task on Wednesday: convincing investors, media and everyone else that Twitter's nearly stalled monthly active user number is not a calamity and good times are ahead. Costolo may be partly to blame for the concern. He reportedly told employees last year that Twitter would end 2013 with 400 million monthly active users (MAU). Instead, Twitter missed even analysts estimates, ending 2013 with just 241 million.

Gone is the viral and rapid growth that Twitter — a network I love — once enjoyed, and it sounds like Costolo knows why.

"We have massive global awareness of Twitter. [We] need to bridge that gap between awareness and engagement on the platform," Costolo said during the Q&A portion of Twitter's earnings call.
In order for Twitter to reach Costolo's short-term goal, Twitter has to become a little more like Facebook, the social platform for the masses. There is one thing Twitter and Costolo can do today that could almost instantly restart the MAU growth engine: launch Twitter TV.

At 241 million active users, Twitter has nearly as many users as there are people in the United States. Of course, Twitter's users are spread around the globe, which has almost 8 billion people. By contrast, Facebook can boast 1.5 billion users.

You might wonder why everyone knows about Twitter, but relatively few use it. Plus, if you watch, read or listen to any media today, it seems the opposite is true: Everyone is using it, right? No, not the normals.
Everyone knows about Twitter because the social network's most active users are members of what I like to call the information "shaper" class — reporters, editors, producers, social media editors and managers, TV anchors, bloggers, marketers, public relation professionals and writers. You get the idea. The people who find information and then share it on wider, often very public networks.

However, many Twitter members rarely — if ever — tweet, but they love following people and consuming their 140 character witticisms. What's more, the modern Twitter is now a media-rich environment, with large images and inline Vine videos. It's entertainment that you can, to a certain extent, sit back and watch like TV.

The problem is that if you're not a member, you can't see inside Twitter: Aside from the occasional Twitter stream embeds and what the Information Class tells you on websites, TV and radio about Twitter activity.

When a premium channel on your cable network wants more subscribers, it typically runs a free weekend where every single cable subscriber can view the once-hidden channel. You get to see what they're offering, and some people subscribe as a result.

Now imagine if on Twitter's homepage, instead of just seeing a sign-up call to action, you had a steady flow of all "public" tweets — and, better yet, a full-configurable TweetDeck-like page where you could choose tweet channels (essentially, topics). Checking out content or different topics, like entertainment, politics, science, celebrities, gossip and technology, should be as easy as changing channels on your TV.

No need to sign up for Twitter or follow anyone. Twitter could simply populate the channels with the most recent public tweets on each topic, or if they choose, have someone curate the best of them. Twitter could even insert some promoted Tweets.

Viewers would be able to click on any link and email, copy or tweet links and embed those tweets wherever they want. However, if they want to follow, retweet or start tweeting on their own, they must join Twitter. My guess is that the more people see inside Twitter, the more likely they are to become members and engage, especially if they can configure their viewing experience (whether or not they're members).
It's a simple, and perhaps obvious, idea, but it's also a smart one; it's an easy fix for a core problem that is not going away any time soon. Twitter's success and future rests on active user growth. As a member of the Information Class, I have a vested interest in Twitter's survival. So I implore Dick Costolo to make this change today and transform Twitter from a product everyone the world has heard of to one everyone wants to use.
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