Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, answered some questions from Rafe Needleman of CNet’s Webware about how Twitter is currently performing, some interesting points arose. I think since the recent changes with Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams occurred, this provided a pinnacle moment to really ask some important questions of the Twitter team.
One thing I just wanted to point out quickly was CNet’s analogy of why Jack and Evan swapped roles. Caroline Mccarthy of CNet
said it was ” time to get real,” which was
slightly harsh.
Jack Dorsey did some fantastic work for the team whilst
being CEO of Twitter. Evan even put this in his blog post
about the move saying that “Jack took Twitter through an order of
magnitude of growth and two major rounds of financing, while safely
navigating some very rocky waters that would have taken even more
experienced leaders down with the ship.”
Even despite various issues that the Twitter community acknowledged, such as no SMS updates outside of the US,
Jack did create a fantastically-dynamic product which really got people
communicating in a new way. He should be commended for that. I
simply believe this change was a positive one, although we are yet to
see what happens.
The one key point I wanted to address from this email interview was how Twitter co-founder Biz Stone
said that “We’ve watched with interest as commercial usage of Twitter
has taken off and really started growing. We think there are some very
interesting opportunities so we’re modeling some scenarios there as
well as other opportunities.”
Now, I am intrigued to know what
commercial uses this may be, and if there is such great commercial
usage will it turn them a profit or revenue at all! I mean, it’s been
great to see rounds of financing going so well for the team, but where
is the money for them?
I won’t try sounding like a resounding broken
record in this article because I would simply be echoing much of what
has already been written recently, here is an article from ReadwriteWeb on the matter that is worth a look. There has even been some thorough discussion over at Webmasterworld about it.
In my opinion I expect we could see a corporate or premium version of Twitter coming through, something that will beat Yammer.com, recent Techcrunch 50 winner
to a pulp, if Twitter was to implement this feature correctly with
their audience I reckon they could make profit pretty rapidly.
I
get the sense that overall from this interview Biz Stone did with Rafe
Needleman, that he is quietly optimistic but has a very clear “never
say never” attitude of the future of the company, which in the current
climate will prove vital to Twitter staying afloat. But how long do you
think Twitter will leave it until they “turn on a business model that
produces revenues?”
