The co-founders participated in a lively fireside chat moderated by Businessweek’s Brad Stone at a sold-out event for the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. The conversation started with a discussion about whether Twitter () has become mainstream. Evan started by asking what “going mainstream” exactly meant, but he did say that Twitter gains more new user signups every week than the entire population of his home state of Nebraska. That’s 1.8 million users per week.
The conversation quickly moved into the rollout of the New Twitter. Both founders said that the reaction has been very positive. VP of Product Jason Goldman had been preparing the team for a backlash, but it simply never occurred. The goal of the new design, Biz Stone said, was to keep Twitter’s inherent simplicity intact while adding the richness and content people are linking to. Williams was the primary driver behind the new design.
The meat of the conversation really began when Brad Stone brought up a recent opinion piece in The New Yorker by best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell. In it, Gladwell downplayed the power of social media in social activism, critiquing the notion that social networks can spur social movements. Supporting a cause on Facebook () or Twitter involves neither a financial or personal risk, Gladwell wrote. Biz Stone responded to the criticism, stating that “some of it is right and some of it is wrong.” He agreed that tweeting doesn’t have the same impact as joining a physical protest where your life is at risk. However, he said it was “absurd” not to understand that Twitter and social media are complementary to that type of activism because of the ability to facilitate the fast exchange of information.
Williams followed up by saying that Twitter’s use in Iran was likely overstated, but it was an early sign of “what is possible and what we’re trying to enable.” The web and electronic networks are now a central point for organization of this type of activism, now that communities don’t all congregate in one place, such as the church, anymore, Williams said.
Twitter, Advertising and New CEOs
Brad Stone asked the Twitter co-founders how they felt about the separation of advertising and editorial content. Evan Williams responded that Twitter clearly labels any tweets or trends that are advertisements. More importantly, he made clear that Twitter is a mix of advertising and non-advertising content. He cited brands such as Starbucks as examples of users voluntarily opting in for promotional tweets about a product. After all, Starbucks didn’t get more than 1 million followers without a lot of people expressing interest in its products.
At one point, the Twitter founders were asked whether they thought the commercialization of the site was “bittersweet.” Biz Stone said he believed the company was succeeding in balancing advertising and commercial content with Twitter’s content quite well. “I want to ask you to name another platform where you can send a message to 5 million people for free,” he said. Yet if a company wanted to reach more people than their own followers, they had the opportunity to do so through Promoted Trends, Tweets or Accounts.
Of course, no Twitter interview this quarter would be complete without a discussion about Evan Williams stepping down as CEO of Twitter. There are plenty of product-oriented CEOs, and Brad Stone asked the Twitter co-founders why Williams didn’t choose to go that route instead. Williams responded that he chose roles at Twitter based on where he would be the most useful, and in fact, he was in his fourth role at Twitter.
Williams said he loved focusing on product the most, and he believed that the position of CEO of Twitter, due to its phenomenal growth, would require more attention on operational efficiency and personnel management than product strategy and direction, which excited Williams more than other factors.
Twitter and a Billion Users
Williams said the co-founders thought about Twitter in “broad strokes;” they were focused on helping people find out what’s happening in the world and becoming an indispensable service for spreading and consuming information woldwide.
This led to another question: Do Twitter’s execs think the service could reach a billion users, something Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously claimed his company would reach after it surpassed the 500 million user mark. Williams affirmed his belief, saying, “Twitter will get to a billion members.” He quickly added it wouldn’t be the same billion individuals as Facebook, and he wouldn’t specify just how long it would take to reach that goal.
His comments likely refer to his team’s belief that Facebook and Twitter are fundamentally different services with fundamentally different goals. Tonight’s conversation was entirely about Twitter as an information network, something that Twitter likes to emphasize anytime it’s compared to Facebook. In the eyes of Twitter’s cofounders, they’ve built a tool that has changed how we consume news and information for the better.
There are a lot of people who would agree.http://mashable.com/2010/10/12/biz-stone-evan-williams-twitter/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29
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