The State Of Twitter

If you want to understand what's going on at Twitter right now, watch this interview that Adam Lashinsky did with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo yesterday at Brainstorm. It's about 23 minutes long and covers most of the major issues that the media has been focused on in the past six months. In Apple's infinite wisdom, this won't play on an iPad or an iPhone because it is a flash player.

 

#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. aanwar

    Classic statement about flash on Apple!

    1. fredwilson

      one of my many pet peeves

      1. MV

        Yeah, choosing not to support Flash for extremely well-founded technical reasons is obviously an enormous strategic blunder by Apple!  Just look at how badly the company is performing, and how poorly their iOS devices are selling!  The public at large must really be in love with that Flash stuff!

        1. JLM

          Pretty damn…………………………………………………………………….funny!

        2. markslater

          lol. i see Fred’s side but that was well put!

      2. Daniel Jalkut

        It was a bold move out of the gate with iOS, but it’s gotten to the point where Apple’s stance essentially has to be accommodated by content providers. At this point, is it “Apple’s infinite wisdom” that is to blame for a poor experience on iOS, or the “infinite wisdom” of a content provider who assumes Flash will be omnipresent?

        1. MV

          Keep in mind that it is not just iOS devices that cannot display Flash content, but also millions of Blackberry and Android devices, particularly those with older versions of the OS that do not support  Flash.   Said content is also not viewable by desktop users who wish to maintain some semblence of a secure browsing environment by not installing the Flash plug-in, which is notoriously ridden with security holes, in addition to being a resource hog.Bottom line: any provider who publishes video content using Flash exclusively in this day and age is fundamentally incompetent.  Period.

          1. Daniel Jalkut

            Great point. It’s easy to scapegoat Apple as the cause for the widespread absence of Flash, but it’s really consistent with the trend towards mobile that more people don’t, and won’t, have effective Flash support.

          2. MV

            Indeed.It is difficult to fathom why some publishers continue to utilize Flash for playback of simple video content.  It’s really an indicator of laziness and/or cluelessness on their part.  Now, if you were publishing some sort of interactive web app that involved complex animations or user interactions (e.g. a casual game), there is at least some small justification for using a framework such as Flash (though even there, standards-based technologies such as HTML5 are making great inroads).  But for straight playback of simple video streams, the use of Flash is utterly pointless, and is actually counterproductive.  Why would you wilfully exclude millions of mobile devices from viewing your content? Particularly when mobile devices are becoming an increasing large percentage of all Internet-connected devices?

      3. JimHirshfield

        It’s about 9am Eastern and the comments on this post are way below average. Safe to attribute that to the fact that so many readers are on a platform that doesn’t lend itself to viewing videos? Update: By “below average” I meant in quantity, not quality. :-/

        1. MV

          Well, personally I would characterize your comment above as “way below average”, in that it erroneously assumes that the platforms in question do not “lend themselves to viewing videos”, when in fact, said platforms are actually exceedingly proficient at displaying videos, particularly those that utilize modern, industry-standard video codecs and open web standards.  Any criticism should rather be leveled at content providers who insist on publishing video content using outdated technologies that require proprietary client-side plug-ins, when non-proprietary options are readily available that produce video that is viewable in any modern, standards-based browser on any platform, without the need for a third-party browser plug-in.

          1. JimHirshfield

            Agreed. I was being general.

          2. MV

            OK, gotcha…  Sorry I misinterpreted your original comment.

        2. ShanaC

          Now that would be interesting to know from a community management POV _ when people hit your site and do something.  

      4. Jeff Buck

        There are many platforms in addition to iOS that do not render Flash well, or at all. I think the use of Flash should be reserved for web applications that demand the (decreasingly) unique value-add features that Flash provides. What value does wrapping a Flash player around a video bring that makes it worth cutting out millions of potential viewers?

  2. awaldstein

    I like that the job description for the yet unhired marketing exec is to ‘curate the brand’. Clever phrase. Good description as long as this means a focus on the developers and end users as well as the big brand advertisers.

    1. fredwilson

      yup. they understand their stakeholders better than people give them creditfor

      1. AlexSchleber

        1) They keep dodging the “actual active users” question ever so artfully.2) Related to this is the huge problem that Twitter still has, that of not improving the user experience, hence the massive number of abandoned accounts (just run an analysis on your own account using e.g. Refollow.com and “not tweeted in 30/90 days” filter). So I question whether they are sufficiently focused on their users as stake-holders.3) Dick Costolo sounds like a PR spokesperson for Twitter, not like a leader with the depth that would come with being a passionate user himself. Sorry.4) Related to 3) may well be the issue with Twitter about to launch precisely the kinds of ads that they should stay away from: in-stream, unrequested, interruption ads. They will either enrage users and/or be ignored in short order. And it is without need, there are better models.”Specific and methodical” roll-out of ill-conceived ads doesn’t make them any less ill conceived.5) Meanwhile, there are tons of important usability/functionality issues that they are not addressing, chief among them search/surface (“Track”) on a per List or per user basis, as well as the flipside of Track, popularity-based surface, i.e. Trending Topics on Lists. Here is someone that’s just starting to do the latter (not affiliated with these developers):https://plus.google.com/u/0…But really this is all stuff that belongs into the Twitter core to create better, more clear use cases. Also, more search/trends = more opportunities for ads that are more like Google search ads, and can actually work.

        1. ShanaC

          Something I realized recently – one of the reasons that twitter may be dodging the question of “active users” is that they may not know.  Does just logging in count as activity – how about an account that pulls data and that is it?Active != pushing.

          1. AlexSchleber

            Oh…they know. And if the number were anything to write home about (likely it’s actually terrible compared to the 200M pipe-dream number), they’d tell it at every opportunity.Current estimates have it at only about 30-60M accounts with enough following/follower users to make sense to even be plausible to be active (10 or more). That’s not yet talking about all of the clearly abandoned accounts, spam/bot accounts, etc. etc.See here: http://www.businessinsider….

          2. fredwilson

            i think you’ll be surprised when they announce the number

          3. fredwilson

            they know. and they are not dodging. just waiting. stay tuned.

          4. AlexSchleber

            Well, of course now you have us most curious. Any ETA on *when* they would be announcing it?

          5. fredwilson

            nope

          6. ShanaC

            I’ll find bunny ears to sure I am tuned in

  3. MV

    If only the Intenet’s various nitwits would cease using utterly unnecessary and inefficient crap technology like Adobe Flash for utterly simple things like serving video.  Idiots.

  4. William Mougayar

    Great interview. It’s not easy to manage such a staggering rate of growth. Kudos for it. But here are my thoughts/reactions/analysis: 1) Twitter has to grow beyond “the tweet”. I’m worried that they may be too focused on Ad sales as the key revenue element. Costelo said “the Ad platform is organic to the Twitter platform”, as they are focused on selling Ads to the world’s top brands where they charge by “engagement” (which is innovative). But these Promoted tweets and Promoted trends seem like old school of ‘interruption marketing’. There must be monetizable value beyond “the tweet”.2) The eco-system positioning is still murky. Dick was hard pressed to find more than 2 examples of eco-system added-value: CRM & Analytics, and he repeated these examples. Twitter needs to describe a more rich and inspiring eco system. They possess the most intelligence on what users are asking and they know where the holes are from the inside. Why don’t they lay out a great vision for it, instead of leaving us to guess what the next move might be? 3) Great motto: “The World in your pocket”, but I find it hard to get it. Costelo said they are true to their original mission of “The World in your pocket”. That’s a great vision for the end-user, but it doesn’t seem to jive with their focus on ad sales & gamed tweets. Where is that easy-to-use client App that gives me that? 4) They need marketing beyond the brand marketing. Costelo said they’re focused on hiring a senior marketing person who will focus on managing/curating the Twitter brand. OK, but I’m hoping for more than that. They definitely need some marketing muscle to explain who/what they are.  I apologize if I’m sounding too critical, but I want Twitter to step-up. It’s not easy to express the value of a multi-purpose platform as complex and as diversified as Twitter who is simultaneously a communications medium, a social/online network, a development platform, a broadcast channel, a listening post, a knowledge repository…and an Ad network. (I know it’s difficult to articulate and market a platform because I’m struggling with that same issue with Eqentia- which does a number of things with content.) 

    1. JLM

      You have hit on a very, very important consideration.Twitter risks becoming an unwelcome interruption and runs the risk of becoming just another unwanted intrusion into my day.I do not need or want one more e-mail or phone solicitation or tweet or postcard pushing somebody else’s deal.

      1. William Mougayar

        Exactly. Paid tweets is not the same as paid search. It irks me that Twitter is showing a lack of imagination with their revenue model. Dick- buy my company, and put me in charge of marketing if you want to realize “The World is your Pocket” vision. Twitter is sitting on a ton of knowledge- where the heck is it? I don’t want it in pins and needles.

        1. markslater

          violently agree on your paid tweets observation.Dick buy mine – i’ve built what you should have.

          1. Timothy Post

            Mark… your startup is close but you’ve got it backwards. The pull should start with the consumer/user, not the merchant. Here’s how I would monetize Twitter.First of all, understand that Facebook helps us manage our PERSONAL relationships. It does this quite well… if a bit stilted.Twitter’s niche will/should be to help us manage our “consumer relationships.” Think about Twitter as a channel of communication. Currently, that channel co-mingles all the people, companies, organizations, airline, etc. whom we follow.Twitter should enable the user to create category specific channels for such things as car, baseball team, jeans, restaurants, sunglasses ad infinium.The key is that I, the user, control each channel’s “status.” I can toggle between different options….. actively looking, totally satisfied, happy but curious, etc. The merchants can then target their marketing campaign(s) at those customers who fit their criteria. The user controls each channel individually. The user can be anonymous or profiled. The merchant pays Twitter per engagement (the word Dick kept using).Additionally, and this is important, users have a public profile wall where s/he can display their relationships with brands, companies, organizations, etc. Each channel (think category) can be public or private. This is what we now do on Facebook with our Fan Pages in our Info/Profile section.Twitter serves as the platform that enables people to better manage their non-personal relationships and at the same time gives merchants ultra qualified double permission-based leads.  A win-win-win. I have no company to buy but I’m here and available ))PS: MySpace got kind of close to this vision (think Doc Searles VRM) but was too limited in it offering of categories. It focused on media, which is the most difficult to monetize. Pity Michael Jones felt the need to jet out of Paris in December after his fly-in, fly-out presentation at LeWeb in 2010.

          2. markslater

            Hey Tim -Actually we are completely 100% consumer pull focused. Nothing happens until the consumer gestures an interest.the user then creates channels (in your assistant) where i have my favorite merchants saved. So in boston – i have italian restaurants in one channel and so on.If i want to go eat italian – i gesture this to my channel and my favorite restuarants are notified immediately and can respond to incent me to come in.email me and i can send you an invite to try it out – your a bostonian! its mark at getabl dot comthanks for the response

        2. awaldstein

          “Paid tweets is not the same as paid search.”Crisp and well said.

          1. William Mougayar

            I think “promoted tweet” is a fancy word for “paid tweet”.

      2. markslater

        this boils down to the simple battle that is coming – between push and pull.the realtime web (as its known i guess) has taken the concept of push and accelerated it towards ZERO (in a calculaic fashion of speaking) – any digital gesture you now make can be acted upon immediately. and as you say a “deal” can be pushed to you.But this notion is about to be challenged and is about to cross the chasm.What this means is that where latency (think not real time web) – validates a push approach to marketing by reason of the fact, that latency removes context (as time increases from my gesture the ability to respond contextually drops of the cliff (i am deciding on a movie and looking at a review, i’ve now stopped doing that and 30 seconds later i am on to something else and the ability to sell me on the movie diminishes), absence of context allows advertising (push) to flourish. “lets just stuff something down their throats and see what sticks”you are seeing this with check ins – companies are making the fatal error that a check in is actually a qualified gesture of interest. And that a check-in qualifies a PUSH action by marketers. It doesn’t. You know why it doesn’t – because technology is finally allowing me to take control of the marketing messages i receive.So technology enables people to make choices because they can control their environment. This flies in the face of the Madison Ave construct as it allows me to prevent you from stuffing things in my face. taking location, and layering on a push construct is flawed as its implicit – my location allows you to imply.But we are entering an explicit (pull) era. Take location and pull your needs to you. tell a service what you are looking for – and let the sellers convince you to choose them. realtime technologies enable these millions of tiny markets to occur – you take search off of a machine and you enable the answer to your question to come from a real person – in realtime – and you have removed push. thats crossing the chasm.market to me when i decide you can. because I’ve told the world what i am looking for. Not because I’ve checked in or tweeted  an interest.this is not a shameless self promotion of our company – i firmly believe in living in an explicit ( i explicitly ask for something) realtime way. There is a place for push – but in my world is subordinated to my ability to pull things to me when i want them.

        1. jonathanmendez

          We entered the explicit pull era with Search and the resultant rise of Google to the #1 brand in the world *and* most successful advertising business ever created. But your points are spot on. This is a user controlled medium and more an more a user generated one. Pulling those things together is the opportunity for Twitter.

          1. markslater

            absolutely – they pioneered the explicit machine. Realtime enables the explicit response from a human – search comes alive!

        2. awaldstein

          Great comment.So…we are the hub of our constantly in-motion, real-time world moving along the plot of our lives asking and then choosing from what is presented. We pull in by request.I get that but think that explicit requests from me within context that are defined by time and gross location coordinates are only a small part of the way there.Implicit and less time-sensitive contextual interests still come into play in my personal discovery process. I’m walking through a new neighborhood in a new city looking for lunch places. I want to know (but am not asking) if there are any art galleries there. Or at any time, my interest footprint makes me receptive for natural wine connections.That implicit model has power equally. It’s built off of the explicit graph at its core.

          1. markslater

            this is a complex issue Arnold. how to define the stuff you dont mind, and how to prevent stuff that you object to.In your example arnold you are explicitly (albeit passive explicit) looking for lunch places. the method you choose is to passively absorb all that is around you.Its the interuption aspect of your implicit model that i reject and that technology can explode.the realtime web (whatever that means) will explode interuption marketing.

          2. awaldstein

            Great conversation Mark…Not belittling the complexity. And not unaware that I’m chasing a dream in this phrasing at least.But the difference, language aside, between us may be that I think the choices of where to hang out and with whom and where to buy are so great that the noisy interrupt driven services will simply implode.Survival of the implicitly relevant if you will.Not arguing that this is a scene that could be written to have chaos as the end game. I’m just choosing to see it as filtering with the poorly done and the intrusive just falling by the wayside.I do think that the drive towards more niche and simply focused interest groups are a response to both of our thoughts, Make it more specific and more unique so that getting it right has a greater chance in the near term.

          3. markslater

            i think we are in violent agreement!there is a place for push – i just happen to be pioneering (if i may be so completely over the top bold) pull.

          4. Mark Essel

            Yours and @markslater:disqus ‘s comments provided me with a brief glimpse of the future.As we move about our lives we’ll implicitly or consciously share what we are open to hearing at any given time or place. Offers will flow in virtually and gracefully to request our attention clearly marking their value offer and how it relates to the transient interests we share.This is what I wanted to do with the IMM in 2009 (leveraging twitter), it is the direction I still work towards now, and its what will keep driving me forward in the future. Tomorrow’s businesses will have a different relationship with clients, and it will be far more focused on catering to our passing interests. When inspiration and need strikes, businesses will be ready to provide satisfaction by continually looking for the perfect time to communicate with us passively eavesdropping on our shared (always opt in) public information.That information will be more than just words, location, audio or video data. Personal data will include our state of mind, our dreams, our goals, our resources, and who we are.

          5. awaldstein

            So well articulated Mark! You are quite a wonderful wordsmith (and I don’t say that lightly).Take a look at Hugh Macleod’s posts and doodles about social objects if you don’t know them already. I find them really useful.In each context, with each connection, in every community instance, that ‘social object’ is always a good way to think about what to design towards. And invariably the social object is us, the some total (and more) of what you refer to as ‘Personal data’.

          6. Mark Essel

            I’ve read Hugh’s social data post on your reccomendation before and adored it for both it’s clarity and relevance to my personal goals.Thank you for the complement :)! I cherish it coming from an author as gifted as yourself at reducing complex systems and trends into actionable market decisions, and even more bewildering you achieve this in an elegant and casual manner. Your mastery of an author’s presence sets a tone with thoughts and words that few writers can comprehend let alone compete with.

          7. markslater

            if i may jump in…the realtime paradigm presents immense difficulties mark. consumer can only consume so much. however contextual or intelligent it is. we will hit a consumption (i say push) tipping point soon. in my humble view it then partially becomes pull. we are   seeing it in the daily deal space (overload) and as this market goes realtime (and contextual – location etc) it will get worse. at what point does the consumer choose to take back some control?and to be clear i throw these ideas out on this comment system not because i know – but because people like you and arnold help me learn…..its the intellectual capital long tail of the wilson blog!

          8. Mark Essel

            Competition will become much fiercer, money will share the lime light with attention, and social value will play just as prevalently.Human consumption will saturate as quickly as population level off, along with autonomous (“things”) slowing in growth. What would open up growth again is exploration of the deep oceans and other nearby habitats.Taste and quality will never cease to shift.

        3. Dave W Baldwin

          On the money Mark.  Though you and I are coming from two different places, we see the same thing.An important point is time.  Then defining Real Time.  It is better to serve the end run allowing a smooth receipt of idea/product that isn’t annoying. The majority of consumers simply don’t have a lot of idle time to figure it out and/or go through hell to get the answer. Unfortunately, Real Time has already been defined via lowering the bar.  But when the real smoothness comes into play, we have a chance to increase usage and resulting revenues.

        4. ShanaC

          I think there are still large spaces for push – how do you get informed? (marketing is in part about education)

          1. markslater

            absolutely shana. there is most definitely space.i cancelled my TV 3 months ago as a bit of an experiment. I now pull all my TV through hulu, netflix etc. once i finish typing i am going to watch my episodes of masterchef. you might know the outcome as i am 2 weeks behind – but thats not important to me. the only thing i miss is sport!

        5. awaldstein

          Reread this Mark.So you are conceptualizing a variant of a flash marketplace built around a transaction. Intent to buy = marketplace of choices triggered by your explicit request.Interesting. “C” as customer is in control (as they should be) and Pull is an act asserting that they will ‘allow’ merchant input when they are ready.Of course then implicit suggestions will also be made by the smart merchants to broaden the sale. I like the shift of power.What I’m not certain of is whether I want transactions as the center of my contextual discovery. I thought of them as a part of the community of interest, not the center.As an example, I discover natural wine aficionados, wineries and vintages come to discussion, access and purchase follow. Good merchants participate in discovery pre-sale as part of my community. As an example, I get tweets about interesting wines with factoids from my local shop. They are adding value without being requested cause they are part of my community of interest.

          1. markslater

            not everything has to be a transaction or a “deal”.Will the daily deal tsunami washing over local merchants – we are all inclined to look at things through this lens.But equally important and oft ignored is the relationship that someone seeks out within a commercial context.So transactions or “deals” are as you very correctly point out one part of our community of interest.

        6. Pete Griffiths

          interesting – thanks

      3. Ryan from GroupTweet

        The beauty of Twitter is that it can be configured to never be that “unwelcome interruption”.  Through the native functionality or the thousands of third party applications, you can configure your account to be entirely “pull” if you desire. The opportunities for customizing your Twitter experience through the various ecosystem applications is amazing.The simplicity and flexibility of the Twitter platform is what makes it great and will continue to propel it forward.Lets hope Twitter continues to believe in what makes it great instead of chasing  the newest fads and features the rest of Silicon Valley are chasing.  

    2. Matt A. Myers

      This is where the Independent Web comes into play IMHO.

    3. Dave W Baldwin

      Very good points William.  IMHO it comes down to the rapid growth, being able to deliver on the volume.  Making the move to iOS will probably deliver some answers later this year.  Architecture is very important to a platform because it will catch up with you.If done right, there is a very big revenue potential.  Of course, I like the term Organic @fredwilson:disqus and with that comes the challenge of achieving organic to all twigs/branches on the tree. Re the market platform, with the rapid growth of Twitter it is difficult to explain something with multiple levels and potential.  Those you talk to can hardly focus on one of them.

    4. Girish Rao

      I agree “World in your pocket” is a great motto. However Costolo also says that they are very focused on this motto and I find that tougher to wrap my head around. To me, “World in your pocket” sounds like Google’s “Don’t be evil” — it’s poignant and catchy but still ambiguous and leaves a lot of room for interpretation.Maybe that’s what Costolo is going for. But he used this motto in the context of differentiating Twitter from “The Ecosystem”, and I don’t think this motto clearly does that.Developers are still wary of developing robust apps on top of Twitter, especially when deciding what features should or should not go in his/her app.

  5. RichardF

    Hopefully I will have time to watch the video at some point.  Be nice if somebody would do some summary notes  🙂  (I really like how @msuster does this with his video posts).   The only notes I could find with a quick  search was this liveblog http://allthingsd.com/20110

  6. Fernando Gutierrez

    The interview is great and there is a lot great information there by DC, but all the time I’ve felt he was being defensive.I understand that he doesn’t want to disclose info, but if he goes to a 25 min interview with an expert interviewer I think he should be ready to say a few new specific things. When someone does non disclosure comments all the time it may appear that he doesn’t want to share data because data is not good. And I’m sure there are some amazing numbers in Twitter we don’t know (well, probably Fred does), so it’s a pity that’s not the feeling you get when seing the interview. At least in my case.

    1. JimHirshfield

      Agreed that he was a bit NDAish, but I think there shouldn’t be an expectation that he’s going to rattle off revenue numbers or other metrics. He’s really a humorous guy, so I was disappointed to not see that side of him in this interview.

  7. JimHirshfield

    I’m reminded of a few things after watching this:- What a huge distraction all the media coverage (hounding?) must be for Dick and team. Yes, I suppose it’s a high class problem 😉 but think about all the time he must have to spend on stuff like this at the expense of running the company.- “Where’s the revenue?” questions continue to come up. Seriously? I’m guessing revenues have exceeded expectations internally for quite some time – and yet the media can’t leave this one alone. It’s a private company, by the way…so why public company scrutiny? 

    1. RichardF

      Jim,  I think it’s a pertinent question for the media to be asking about a company that is as high profile as Twitter, regardless of whether it’s public or private.  It’s not that obvious to me what their revenue model is at the moment.

      1. William Mougayar

        “not that obvious”…you’re being kind, unlike me.

        1. RichardF

          I’m sure they’ve got something up their sleeve….Fred will make sure of that…they are part of his retirement fund 😉

      2. JimHirshfield

        Fair enough, but Twitter doesn’t have an obligation or accountability to the public. So, I respect them keeping this info close to the vest if it in some way maintains a competitive advantage. What do they gain by stating revenues?I suppose I don’t blame the Media for continuing to probe. But it just gets old after a while.

        1. RichardF

          You are absolutely right, it’s their choice and I respect that.  They probably don’t gain much by stating their revenues (other than to silence critics, if they are able to).The issue is that when a company is slow to report revenue figures it’s usually because there isn’t much to report

  8. Matt A. Myers

    By infinite wisdom you mean to say controlling-ecosystem? 😉

  9. John A Arkansawyer

    In Apple’s infinite wisdom, this won’t play on an iPad or an iPhone because it is a flash player.I’ve nearly abandoned running Safari on OS X because the interaction between it and the Flash plugin keeps taking me down. It’s a problem I’m only having with Safari, and it’s a problem I’ve only started having recently. I wonder why that’s happening. Or maybe I don’t.

  10. chrisdorr

    Without being pro or anti Apple, would it not make sense to make this available in other than Flash so the large numbers of iPad and iPhone users could see?

  11. ErikSchwartz

    Clearly twitter has an important and large business. What worries me about twitter is the levels of revenue they need to reach to support their recent valuation. There’s no question in my mind that they can generate multiple hundreds of millions in revenue. But the folks who are investing now at a $7B valuation need the company to become worth considerably more than $7B.The core problem seems to me that twitter’s valuation is based on a metric like registrations or total traffic through the network. The growth in those metrics has been incredible.But their revenue seems proportional to a much smaller number of power users who generate most of the message volume. 3rd parties who buy data about the stream also provide substantial revenue. But once the data is generated by a statistically significant number of users does quadrupling the sample size mean you can charge 4X as much for the data. I don’t see the exponential growth in those areas.The challenge is to come up with a revenue stream that is proportional to the total number of users or the cumulative message traffic without fundamentally changing the service. It is not obvious how to do that.

    1. fredwilson

      worrying is my middle name

      1. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

        Good one.In that case.Hi, I am Kasi Ha Ha Ha Agilandam… nice meeting you!!! 🙂

  12. RacerRick

    Wow, a sport coat.  Very fancy.

  13. Robert Thuston

    I enjoy Twitter and am thankful for it introducing me to the wonderful blogs I now follow, but I could see the way I use it being replaced by another platform in the future.  I don’t think Twitter should focus on stopping that.

  14. MartinEdic

    I don’t believe the decision to publish in Flash has anything to do with Apple- it’s just pure laziness. HTML5 is the emerging standard- why would all new vids not be encoded with it?It’s like publishing ebooks as PDFs…

  15. im2b_dl

    Not to sound like a broken record but it is too bad they let TipJoy slip off and not acquire.  Twitter could have been the platform that everyone used for integrated retail.  imho. (especially since right now there is a good chance they just become a brand platform).

  16. Douglas Crets

    I like how, when Dick Costolo talks about the advertising issues, he’s coming at it from the perspective as a hyper user, or a super user. People are not really following people as much as they are following ideas. 

  17. Douglas Crets

    Also, the most crucial issue at play here with Twitter, advertising, and content, is the word “real-time.” 

  18. Jennifer McFadden

    Interesting interview. Thanks for sharing. There is another good one that I watched yesterday (dated–it is from June) of John Battelle interviewing Adam Bain, President of Global Revenue. Well worth a few minutes if you’re interested in learning more about their revenue strategy.http://bcove.me/tey3zvnm

  19. awaldstein

    @VictusFate:disqus Thank you Mark!

  20. Trademark Application

    Here is a similar storyThe first Twitter presidential debate Wednesday offered what some might consider a welcome milestone in political discourse: It was the first debate in which you couldn’t hear the politicians speak.But that didn’t stop six Republican candidates for president from “talking” over each other online as they answered questions in overlapping, 140-character bursts via the San Francisco micro-blogging company, Twitter.Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-b

  21. William Mougayar

    Not to add fuel to the fire…http://www.businessinsider.com/sco…But I love Twitter, and want it to succeed. If we have high expectations for it, so be it. Let them step up. Given a single choice,- Twitter or Google+…today, I would choose Twitter over Google+. Twitter is where the innovation is in social. Despite its bells and whistles, Google+ is a big aggregate of duplicative social networking/media features. 

    1. fredwilson

      I listen to people who have a track record of predicting winners and losers.I ignore those who dont.

  22. Dale Allyn

    With respect, I feel that “The World in Your Pocket” is a miss and comes off as hyperbole. To me, the world in your pocket is a compact device with a web browser with which I can find just about anything in the world and act (or interact). For me, Twitter does not and will not provide that – not even close. However Dick’s line “Simplicity in a Complex World” is far more powerful and on point IMHO. Good interview though. Thank you for posting it.

  23. jim

    i couldn’t get past the ten minute mark of this video.  the first ten minutes suggest that twitter either is, or hopes to become, an ad agency. and notwithstanding that google is essentially an ad agency as well, i just don’t see what’s interesting about that.  i’m sure lots of people will make lots of money off of it and etc etc, but this blog often talks about “disruption” and “revolution” and etc etc. and an ad agency doesn’t fit either of those terms.

  24. Peculiarblend

    Fantastic interview. It’s always a pleasure to hear big daddies talk about one of the biggest sensation.   

  25. Dan Buell

    Why don’t they use a modern technology to embed the video such as HTML5?

  26. manuel martin

    thinking about how can twitter improve and generate revenue, I will expose one ideaif twitter business rely on user’s database and it’s power for broadcasting, will be nice to have a sort of TwitterUserStoreI think that one problem for common new users in twitter is find who to follow (ok… you can follow your friends or companies you like… but the power of twitter is search broadcasted info)similar to AppStore, in TwitterUserStore, users can find user sorted by categories, with popularity level, engagement… anything you can imagineand ok… powered user can promote them in the Store, and of course, put a price to follow themwith a good system of recommendations and true valuation of the users accounts, will be a nice place to find who to followreally is one copy the AppStore business model changing apps for usersthe promotion and revenue generation will be in the store, leaving the timeline free of advertising… like now and like twitter users want foreverare you ready to price your tweets?