I say think big Jack!
Imagine a news system that combines the features of cable news that people find so comforting with the level playing field of social media.
Find a way to surface original ideas, not rehashes of the same old stuff. Really you don't get many news ideas from the news most people get.
Be audacious. Encourage all your participants to be news reporters and discussers. Add on an assignment desk. A kickstarter-like feature for commissioning investigations. Organize the users into the largest news organization that has ever existed, maybe the largest one that will ever exist.
Don't stop here. News is not at equilibrium. And Twitter is news and news is Twitter, if you let it be.
Really all that's needed are tools for organizing, which just happens to be exactly what we need in the political life of our country, of the world.
Jack, you've got the biggest opportunity in news in a century.
Carpe diem man!
PS: With Twitter stock so depressed it's hard to imagine shareholders objecting to anything exciting or interesting with a chance of yielding great results. (Note I own a small number of Twitter shares myself.)
PPS: I posted two specific ideas to the thread Jack started.