Twitter: we stand behind Wheeler on net neutrality

Steven Loeb · February 23, 2015 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3c28

The social network comes out in favor of Wheeler's proposal to regulate broadband as a utility

Earlier this month, Federal Communication Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler revealed his latest plan for net neutrality, by taking the position endorsed by the President: to regulate broadband as a utility.

There are big names on both sides of the issue, and one major player just came out in favor of the proposal: Twitter, which endorsed Wheeler's idea in a blog post on Monday.

“Safeguarding the historic open architecture of the Internet and the ability for all users to ‘innovate without permission’ is critical to American economic aspirations and our nation’s global competitiveness. These rules also have important implications for freedom of expression," the company wrote.

"This openness promotes free and fair competition and fosters ongoing investment and innovation. We need clear, enforceable, legally sustainable rules to ensure that the Internet remains open and continues to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers."

Ultimately, the company said, such free speech "is the heart of Twitter," and without net neutrality "some of today’s most successful and widely-known Internet companies might never have come into existence."

The company also noted that it had previously expressed support for net neutrality through participation in the Internet Association,

What Wheeler is proposing, and the FCC is set to vote on, is the idea of regulating broadband under Title II of the Communications Act, which is what it currently uses to regulate the phone industry. 

Doing so would "ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services," which would effectively make the use of "fast-lanes" illegal," Wheeler said when first announcing his intentions.

In addition, he said it would give consumers protection from broadband operators who may not be put the best interests of the public ahead of their own business interests.

"We strongly support ensuring that such rules include prohibitions against blocking or throttling of sites and services as well as the paid prioritization of some traffic over others. These rules should govern Internet service whether users are at their desk at home or on their smartphone across town," Twitter said of the idea, praising the FCC for using a "light touch" and for advocating for "smart Internet policies."

"In moving forward, the FCC is also wisely avoiding unnecessary and overly burdensome regulation. The Commission is embracing the same kind of “light touch” regulatory approach that the Congress and the Commission has pursued with respect to wireless services since the 1990s," said Twitter.

"We’re also pleased that in recent weeks on Capitol Hill, we’ve seen a return to bipartisan support for net neutrality rules. We welcome the discussion of possible statutory rules that could codify these principles."

This idea is not without its detractors, of course, notably including some of the broadband operators, including AT&T, which wrote a blog post arguing against Wheeler's proposal before it was even official.

Dallas Maverick's owner Mark Cuban also came out as a high profile advocate against net neutrality, using some mighty colorful language to describe what he believe will happen if it goes through. Thereaction to Cuban's comments from those on social media were harsh, to say the least.

The FCC is set to officially vote on the proposal on Thursday of this week.

(Image source: savetheinternet.com)

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.

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