Twitter's Ev & Biz on NOW and the Future

On the coattails of Twitter getting a sweet feature in USA Today, Ev Williams and Biz Stone opened up the D Conference this past week, in the first of a series of fireside-chat like interviews.

The buzz of the conference following their appearance were filled with comments like: "yeah, the press are having a love fest with Twitter right now" and "it was so cool and authentic that they admitted that they just don't have all the answers figured out yet," to people throwing their own ideas out about what 'they think' Twitter's new business model should be.

Other visionaries just shrugged it off saying the business model will come - there's tons of opportunities to make money. Focus on organizational structure and get the team and strategy right. As for the strategy, clearly there is more than one for the taking. But isn't it all about apps, Walt and others wanted to know?

Third-party apps are already out there in abundance. Having gone through the search for simplifying my day on Twitter more than once, I've played with the freebies and questioned some that charge $100 or more for something I could get an intern to do in an hour.

Those who don't want to take the time but are 'hooked' are signing up to play however, even if they become one of thousands of Twitter quitters a couple of months later. No one wants to be left out of the 'trend loop,' even mainstream folks who are being pressured to get an account in the same way I was pressured when an industry friend over 50 finally pushed me to jump on the Facebook bandwagon. He said, "Renee, this is the one."

Twitter can become an addictive drug. For some, its about compulsive tweeting. My addictive drug with Twitter is less about the tweets and more about the fascination with how people present themselves in their profiles and frankly, why they're there, and what they want people to know. Before I switched to Marketing, I was deeply baked into the world of anthropology so for me, its one giant anthropoligical study that constantly surprises screen after screen.

I was one of the few that joined Twitter at SXSW a few years ago when the A-list tech bloggers and early adopters jumped on board. They went straight for mobile device use first which ended up wasting so many cycles in the first month, I had to take it off and desktop alone simply wasn't a productive solution.

I've changed handles a few times since then and dabbled with the pros and cons for my own business as well as what my clients can gain -- short and long term. There's no question that the marketing value is there. Still in its infancy however, the big issue that remains is the ROI for how much time my team has to commit to get that gain. It's significant.

Being part of the conversation, whether its on a blog, social network or Twitter is an incredible time sync if you want to engage, engage, engage the way the social media crowd dictates you need to. Hence, the Twitter quitters and hence the other stats, i.e., more than half of those who sign up for Twitter only use it once a month.

Ev agrees that Twitter is still in its infancy and yet even with the quitters, the growth of users is staggering. “19% of Americans use Twitter once or more a day,” Walt says to Ev who responds with a grin: “if we’re still in our infancy, then those numbers aren’t too bad, don’t you think?”

And, let's not forget the Twitter users worldwide....I know, countless non-native English speakers are following me across several categories.

And for this staggering growth, they only have 43 employees (doubled since January) doing 'it all' despite their recent investment, which now brings the total to $55 million.

Says Biz on the beginning of their relationship and how things started, "Jack Dorsey who had a history writing software for ambulance and dispatch had an inspiration."

(I actually remember Jack telling me about his early inspiration a few years ago in a dark bar where some Web 2.0 hard-to-pronounce start-up was having a networking shindig in San Francisco).

He was fascinated with short messages. Biz recalls Jack's inspiration in the early days - “I have this idea – it's like a buddy list, but you can look at their status through quick messages. It’s interesting to me and he said to us, what do you think of this?? Not just when you’re tethered to the computer, but from a mobile device.”

Ev pipes in, “Biz and Jack developed a prototype of Twitter and we started playing with it and realized it was fun. At the time, Biz and I were still at Odeo and we didn’t see the bright future of it……generally because I’m not good at market research if I’m not using it myself….”

Biz adds, “that was the great thing about Twitter, even when we were prototyping it, we realized it was fun, so we got fired up.”

Walt was curious about numbers, whether they were at 32 million yet, but Ev replied with his renown boyish grin, "we don’t release numbers.”

The features are pretty simple, but frankly some of the best products keep it simple. Look at Apple's success as a prime example. And, nearly everyone I know uses Twitter through a third-party app, not through Twitter's own interface. I've tried three so far and am still exploring.

Walt asks the crowd how many do the same and roughly a quarter of the room raise their hand. I was surprised it wasn't more, but then again, they could have been tweeting or doing email like nearly everyone does at these conferences, so perhaps they didn't have enough time to respond to the question.

Ev says, “we’re going to try to make our UI as good as possible, but it's great that others are building third party apps…..we’ve never built an iPhone app but there are dozens of others who have built great ones. Open culture is part of the Twitter culture. You can’t win by trying to corral people and things in. Lots of these things create value. Some people live in TweetDeck and others live in their iPhones.”

Adds Biz, “openness is a huge movement. We’ve noticed that people are moving their communications into the blogging realm, sharing photos on flickr and YouTube and moving this communication into this public forum, and they’re getting a lot of value from it. You can take a tweet that is valueless or meaningless. The tweet in itself has very little value but it can turn into something of value if it resonates with someone else. It’s about companies interacting with each other. There’s a ton of value of being open.”

Kara wants to know what's important for them to own and build and keep. Says Ev, "because of the openness, we’re able to offer so much value. We plan to work on search and add more than just social connection.”

Walt asks, “when you say you’re going to work on these things, are you going to work on web pages or are you going to have clients?” Again, the response is back to Twitter's open culture. "Everything goes back in to nurture the ecosystem,” says Biz.

Kara eagerly tries to get them to reveal a business plan. “Real time search is the big one,” says Kara. “Sometimes its valuable and sometimes its not. Is it monetizable or not?”

Ev says with a smile, “We just want everyone to get along. Real time search on Google is web search. Twitter is Twitter search and there are links to the web in there, but what we’re doing with search is really trying to give people better ways to filter within Twitter. It’s different than what other people are talking about when they talk about real time search.

It has low latency but there’s a lot of value in the speed of Twitter. It’s a great way to share things in real time. People out in the world can see that. Twitter is about real-time information discovery.”

Then they move into advertising which was bound to come up in the heals of search. It begs the question: is advertising the future business model for Twitter?

Biz says, “when I think of search, I think about a box and a button. When I think about what we’re doing at Twitter, I think about discovery. When there’s a structured intent, there’s a great opportunity to make introductions to people. Did you realize that this information is on Twitter or that you can meet this person on Twitter? It’s about creating more opportunities for discovery.”

The WSJ did a poll and some of the results were displayed on a screen during the interview. The poll was centered around what people would be willing to see on Twitter or used by Twitter's management. I didn't catch them all but here are some of the results:

Banner advertising: all 30%, male 34% and female 26%

Professional accounts for companies and power uses which come with enhanced capabilities for several hundred dollars per year: all 24%, male 28%, female 19%

Text advertising which displays in between the tweets I follow: 22% all, male 29%, female 15%

Pop-up advertising: 17% all, 25% male, 11% female

Require all users to pay a modest monthly subscription (up to $5 a month): 14% all, 18% male.....

Too high in my opinion, if you had more than one account, you'd be up to well over $100 a year to add to the ecosystem. Remember that we don't pay anything to play on Google.

READ What Would Google Do? Think free baby and how to make money through the side door, not through the consumer, at least not for your primary 'value-add.'

They then moved onto the topic of corporate use.....there's a ton of corporations using Twitter already. They're not 'yet' being creative in my opinion, but many have accounts and are adding new followers every day.

Dunkin Donuts is using Twitter to communicate with fans. I came across Dunkin Donuts the other day and my first thought was "is this the real Dunkin Donuts?" How many Oprah, Paris Hilton and Tony Robbins accounts are there? Haven't I come across more than one for nearly every celebrity?

You want to make sure no one else is interfering with your brand. They said that one thing they could offer is an authentication service for companies and perhaps charge money for it.

Surprising to many that when asked by Walt whether they would both be still running Twitter in five years, they both said yes. "We want to build an innovative company." Even if that's true, Walt followed up with the real question, "does the board feel the same way?"

While they won't sell today, it would be interesting to see how much $$ it would take for them to sell early and not build that innovative company. I hope they go the 'creation' route rather than flipping it since flipping really great ideas too early often ends up killing the sauce that made them special in the first place.

On their next big thing? Scaling the company, they say. Says Ev, "we need to be a lot bigger. We need to make the product much much better. There’s a ton of stuff to do to improve user experience and to help users become more engaged. We want to deepen the value proposition for existing users and of course, monetize the business. Our big focus is building the value of Twitter for users.”

Hear hear. Make a better product and the addicts will stay on board. They're already there and the user base is growing, so continue to innovate and we'll all stick around.

What I'd love to see them add is a filter for my top-tier. If I'm following more than 1,000 which most will over time as their participation grows, how do you keep up with key people you need to read rather than those who simply interest you. There's maybe 50-75 people who need to be on my radar a few times a day....give me another window that displays my top 100 and let me personalize it.

Another filter I'd like and maybe its a drop down menu that people tick off when they tweet: indicate whether you're tweeting about what you're currently 'doing' OR what you're currently 'thinking.' I want to know what the people who inspire me are thinking and the creative things that are on their mind for the day. It's a way to make me smarter and Twitter could be a remarkable tool for that alone......I'm longing for that filtering capability.

Now that the money is there and they're adding more people, here's a plea from at least from one early user who's not a tweetaholic or a geek who cares about people's every move.

One more plea: if there's porn in the profile, include a box I can check off that says block porn stars from following me or me following them 'by accident,' - seriously, it can happen by accident.

Twitter can make people faster and smarter but it needs more filters and capabilities to turn things on and off. I also want categories since I have so many interests and topics that I need and want to follow, yet don't have the time to create and manage multiple accounts to keep on top of it all.

Another theme in what they both want from the company is to create things that compliments what people already do. They don't want to offer things that don't offer real value. As for the longer term future with the money they now have to build: innovate, improve the interface, get bigger and then monetize.

While they may not have all the answers figured out yet, they're young entrepreneurs who have a track record of doing innovation things. And there's a lot to love about these guys. They're authentic, genuine and really want to build things that help people and offer value.

D's Opening Session

Ev Williams and Biz Stone on the D stage yesterday.

A Chat with Yahoo's Carol Bartz

WSJ's Kara Swisher interviews Yahoo's CEO and president Carol Bartz on the D7 stage in San Diego today. Is Yahoo a media or technology company? Carol shares the history with the audience of how she got to Yahoo and what motivated her to say yes, I'm on board.

When Yahoo execs first approached her late last fall, Carol wasn't interested at first but after several conversations with them, she not only realized Yahoo's potential but also thought that "it would be a lot of fun."

"It was a management issue," she said. In addition to Yahoo needing some structure, she talks about what's important for Yahoo today, such as really great video, social and community. On Google as a competitor, she says "they don't have the reach we have, we're different companies with very different positioning.

In Asia, they like color; we want to be more personal and custom for people. We're the company that people come to get informed, not just in search...with us, you also get a very local feel. We're not a competitor to Facebook or Twitter....we all provide different functions for people."

Advertising comes up as a topic as does the economy from a larger sense and for Yahoo. Carol says with a laugh, "isn't down 15 the new flat?” Carol picks up the WSJ paper at her feet and shows us a full page ad on the back page. She says “advertising is very important for companies; they still need the kind of presence and emotion in front of their key people and Yahoo does that exceptionally well."

Emotion and motion are her buzz words. "A really great place to buy advertising is where you can really show emotion and motion, such as the Yahoo sports section for example. Because of technology, the online advertising space has promised a lot of flexibility. With flexibility, you also need some very complex procedures.”

As for dealing with the perception that Yahoo has lost it and is behind, Carol just moves on and doesn't get caught up in the past. She keeps it simple - “just do a good job and talk about it."

For example, everyone out there has said that Yahoo has lost the youth, but in the 18-24 age category, they have a 76% reach. She adds, "everyone just doesn’t go to Facebook. We have half the mobile users in the states and mobile users are the kids. We have to continue to appeal to people who come to us. Step-by-step, people will see that Yahoo is back.”

Other players have taken the route of a number two, bringing on an internet visionary to re-establish a brand or relaunch one. She doesn’t want a number two however because having one muddles the waters as to who is actually in charge. Loved her energy - strong, confident and not afraid to remind us twice that's 60...."people call me Carol60," she says. I hope I'm that confident about publicly throwing my age out there when I turn 60. Way to go.

She also reminds the audience that Yahoo still has a lot of really smart people including an amazing research group, once again, moving the conversation away from Yahoo falling behind and being a number two to Google, Facebook and others. Her stats back it up and frankly, as she points out....it's not just about search, particularly for other cultures.

Back to demonstrating that age equals wisdom and experience, she says with confidence, "those in the audience who have a little age on you will appreciate this. What's interesting is that once you ask a lot of questions, things happen.

Her job is to ask questions and keep asking questions because doing that unleashing a lot of power with people: "'Is that the best that you can do? Will that excite the customer? Does it really have to work that way?' It doesn’t have to be complex, but what you expect, they respect.”

On Carol's management style, Carol says she's fair but tough. "There are definitely people out there who are still alive who worked for me.” It's publicly known that Carol has a four year contract, but she says she'll stick around for at least that long if not longer.

Israel's Sense of Fashion Picks up Steam

Israel's Sense of Fashion is starting to pick up steam. CEO and Founder Daria Shualy and her crew below in a creative shot that paints an image of their corporate culture and what they have to offer.

Their vision is to create an online home for independent fashion designers, trendsetters, fans and shoppers. They don't believe in an artificial separation between the different elements which compose the real live indie fashion scene, so the goal is to enable all these elements to come together in one place online.

If you're into indie fashion, whether you're a designers, fashionistas or a student, you can show off your creations, personal style and style picks. You can also shop, sell, interact, influence and be inspired.

For designers, Sense of Fashion provides an online shop with a live clientele base and access to clear and open communication with buyers, fans and other designers. For people interested in buying, you can tap into a massive gallery and shop for independent fashion, which will grow over time and include vintage and second hand, one-of originals and new unique designs.

They do not currently charge a listing fee and they enable you to upload an unlimited amount of photos for an unlimited amount of time for free, and most importantly, because the fashionistas and buyers have real live profiles on the site, they offer a real connection to the fans, and a real live clientele base, which gives constant feedback to the designers, and promotes them. Cool stuff from a new player to the market eh?

Says Daria, "we add value to Flickr, where there are a lot of designers which will now be able to send interested buyers to us to actually shop. We add value to Facebook for both fashionistas and designers, by enabling commerce and supplying a more targeted audience, so that they don't have to “bother” all their contacts, but can target the ones who are fashion oriented."

She adds, "we also add value to shops by big brands, anywhere from Gap and H&M to American Apparel and Urban Outfitters, by supplying a large variety of photos of 'how real people wear this.'”

Plans to support mobile are coming in the future.

One last comment: we need a little more fashion in San Francisco - bring it on Sense of Fashion team. It seems like the further west I migrate, the more the fashion culture migrates to jeans, tattered t-shirts and schwag. I miss the hats, funky shoes and scarves of London, the sassy but edgy casual suits of Milan and the fashionable overcoats and stylish boots of New York.

Honore's Slow Retreat

Carl Honore is hosting a slow retreat from October 11th to 18th 2009 in Italy at a renovated 17th-century farmhouse set in 20 acres of farm and woodland in the rolling hills of Umbria. The retreat is designed for people who are always in a hurry and yearn to slow down.

This is so much more than just a holiday in the land of la dolce vita. It’s a chance to explore and experience the ideas behind the book that defined the international Slow Movement with the author himself. A chance to reconnect with your inner tortoise, reset your metronome and reinvent your life.

Knowing Carl personally and having heard him speak on more than one occasion, he invokes and engages as he explores the benefits of deceleration and tracks how people everywhere are putting the Slow creed into practice.

Love this media kudo: ABC News christened him “the unofficial godfather of a growing cultural shift toward slowing down.”

Carl will lead a week of workshops, talks, debates and activities that will show you how slowing down can help you work, play and live better in the modern world. Click here to find out more and book for the retreat.

Introducing Mahala

South Africa introduces Mahala, a new creative culture and reality magazine. August will be the first issue.

Freshly squeezed last week "My Black President" by Sean O'Toole.

La Calle Mission: Poetry & Visuals in Motion

Everyone's having fun with video. A relative of someone I know was involved in the creation and production of this amateur video about San Francisco's Mission District. Directed by Xaul Reyes, poem by Huracan Gomez.

While the quality is sketchy at times, remember that these guys don't have video experience and simply by playing around with basic video editing tools, they can throw Huracan's poem up on the web in no time without spending a fortune and give viewers a pretty realistic view of the lower Mission.

SF's Memorial Day Carnival Parade in Action

I can see San Francisco's Memorial Day Carnival Parade along Mission Street from a 3 story house rooftop.

It's cold for late May in the same way that Mark Twain's infamous quote that he never really said, reminds me of the reality of San Francisco summer every year. I want to grab a parka, but realizing that notion is ridiculous, I merely think about San Diego where I'll be for a chunk of this week.

A very human but colorful shot by Alaskan Dude taken at a previous parade which will you a flavor of an event I have chosen not to shoot this weekend.

Cool Factor in SF Gate

Client Voyij makes SF Gate this morning. Rock on.

"Cool factor: Voyij assembles all the available deals based on your original city, allowing you to see any current applicable sales. You can refine the search based on travel dates, hotel star ratings, destination, activities and price. The site is especially useful for people who are interested in seeing deals first and are not wedded to particular destinations or dates."

Shopping for Travel Deals

Client Voyij gets picked up in LA Times, Lifehacker and a smattering of Web 2.0 and travel blogs this week following their launch on Wednesday.