Twitter tweaks?

Investor Chris Sacca advocates big changes at the site to expand its user base.

Outspoken Twitter Inc. investor Chris Sacca published a lengthy essay online Wednesday advocating big changes at the social media site to dramatically expand its user base.

The nearly 8,500-word post appeared a day before Twitter’s annual investor meeting in San Francisco on Thursday. Twitter is under growing pressure to improve its stock performance, which has fallen from a high of $69 a share in January 2014 to $37.74 early Thursday.

Sacca has made a fortune investing early in the likes of Twitter, Uber, Instagram and Kickstarter.

He said his essay, titled “What Twitter Can Be,” was not a “hit piece” and that Wall Street needed help understanding Twitter’s potential.

“I believe in Twitter. The company itself is improving, not worsening. The stock market doesn’t get that because Twitter has failed to tell its own story to investors and users,” Sacca wrote.

Here’s a sample of his thoughts:

What isn’t going well at Twitter?

New user growth has stalled.

Almost 1 billion users have tried Twitter and not stuck around.

Direct response advertising has fallen short of hopes.

What is going well at Twitter?

The pace of product development has accelerated dramatically.

Twitter has shown a willingness to take more risk in making changes to the core product.

Revenue is growing at 74% year over year. (There is no public company of that scale growing anywhere near as fast.)

Twitter is too hard to use, scary and feels lonely, Sacca said. He said his primary wish was for Twitter to build its audience so it can show as many ads as possible.

“I am a proud Twitter shareholder and Twitter user,” he wrote. “I want this company to succeed. I want the people who work at Twitter to win. I want this stock to be worth more. I own more of it than virtually anyone working at the company.”