Could Battle of the Billionaires be Twitter's big ticket?

In this handle, we have @Carl_C_Icahn, age 80, ranked #43 by Forbes with a net worth of $17.4 billion. In the opposing handle, @mcuban, age 58, with a Forbes ranking of #327 and a net worth of $3.2 billion...

Yesterday Twitter was the site of the first Battle of the Billionaires between Carl Icahn and Mark Cuban. Both men have been linked to the Trump campaign, Cuban as a possible Trump running mate, Icahn as Treasury Secretary in a Trump cabinet. In July, Cuban publicly declared his support for Hillary Clinton, referring to Donald Trump as bat-sh*t crazy. Carl Icahn praised Donald Trump's economic plan and chastised Hillary Clinton for not mentioning deregulation in her economic platform. 

Yesterday, Mark Cuban shot a tweet in Icahn's direction accusing him of hedge-fund hypocrisy for investing in heavily-regulated industries.

The battle was on and the brief exchange that ensued had the business press atwitter. It isn't every day that we get to watch billionaires duke it out in a public forum. Only a few punches were thrown, but you had to give the match to Cuban because the only thing that matters in Twitter is the killer quip, and Cuban had the best zinger.

TKO to Cuban.

Oh, why doesn't Twitter promote corporate-sponsored celebrity exchanges like Icahn versus Cuban in a feature called Snark Tank? You could have a Battle of the Billionaire division, Hip-Hop-Drop featuring a rematch between Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa, and Troll-on-Troll where Azealia Banks can take on fellow Twitter outcast, Milo Yiannopoulos.

Nowhere else on social media are people more likely to get entangled in self-revelatory spats than on Twitter, and every one of us has a front row tweet. We can join in the fun hurling heckles from the cheap seats or watch quietly on the sidelines. And when the battle is over, we all get to vote for who we think is the winner.

The tendency to draw out 140 characters of impulsivity is Twitter's unique competitive advantage that it has yet to exploit. It's difficult to filter spirited exchanges like the one between Icahn and Cuban from the Twitter stream. Third parties can cut and paste and storify, but within the Twitter ecosystem, it's like trying to follow raindrops in a firehose.

Sadly, rather Snark Tank, yesterday Twitter announced its new branded stickers.

"Now, people around the world can all share their universal passion for Pepsi and make the brand come alive in a powerful new way on Twitter." ~ Adam Bain, COO Twitter

George Bernhard Shaw said there is only one universal passion and that's fear, not Pepsi. How can a brand come alive? What would Pepsi look like if it were a sentient soda? Why do press releases always sound so delusional, like they were written by Gary Busey?

If Pepsi were alive it would be a bubbly Gary Busey. Fortunately Pepsi is just a Twitter sticker that we can give to Mark Cuban for his victory over Carl Icahn.

Who would you like to see go tweet-to-tweet on Twitter? A very special prize goes to the commenter with the best match-up as determined by the likes of their fellow LinkedInians.