'Ev' And 'Biz' See Bright Future For Twitter

NEAL CONAN, host:

When Captain Sully Sullenberger safely ditched an airliner in the Hudson River, some of us followed the story as it happened on a short messaging service known as Twitter.

Twitter, which started in 2006, allows users to follow each other's posts, known as tweets, short updates on what they're doing and what's happening where they are. The service has become the next big thing in technology. Millions of people around the world have signed up to find out what's happening, to follow celebrities and keep up with friends.

And so what are you using Twitter for? Give us as a call, 800-989-8255, or e-mail us, talk@npr.org. And if you're on Twitter, you can reply to us at TOTN.

Joining us now from member station KQED in San Francisco, Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Ev and Biz, as they're known online, founded Twitter along with Jack Dorsey. And it's nice to have you on the program today.

Mr. BIZ STONE (Co-founder, Twitter): Thank you, Neal. It's great to be here.

Mr. EVAN WILLIAMS (Co-founder, Twitter): Thanks.

CONAN: And which one of you is which? Ev?

Mr. WILLIAMS: This is Ev.

CONAN: Ev. Okay. We just want to get your voices straight so we know who's talking. Ev, is the Twitter of today what you imagined back in 2006?

Mr. WILIAMS: Well, in some ways. The product hasn't changed that much. But certainly the phenomenon and the number of users and everything else is much bigger than we anticipated, I think.

Mr. STONE: Yeah, I would add that, yeah, we thought of it originally as a very just sort of simple social utility, and it's grown to be much, much more than that.

CONAN: That's an interesting word, utility, Biz.

Mr. STONE: Yeah, you know, when we started working on Twitter, we didn't think of it so much as a social network as a communication network with social elements to it. And I think that's sort of a key difference with the service.

CONAN: But a utility, we think of utilities as water, power, that sort of thing.

Mr. STONE: Right. Yeah. That's another overarching kind of reaching into the kind of the simplicity of the tool, makes it feel to us like something like it almost a natural extension, something that sort of every mobile phone user would have, almost as a right.

CONAN: And Ev, as a lot of us use of electricity in a lot of interesting ways and a lot of us use water in interesting ways, a lot of people learn to use Twitter in interesting ways.

Mr. WILLIAMS: They really have. And that's - the product has evolved, or that the usage has evolved in many different ways. And we've really taken the lead of the users and found out what it was for. We - there's been hundreds of applications that we would have never anticipated.

CONAN: Among them, an extremely powerful search engine which apparently, as I read it, was devised by one of your users who was frustrated that you didn't have one.

Mr. STONE: Yeah, that's true, actually. The search was built on top of our APIs, which are basically just a way of exposing a lot of the inner workings of Twitter so that other developers around the world can build new and interesting ways of interacting with it. And these guys, based out of Virginia, created a really interesting way of sort of indexing Twitter in real time so that you could search for anything you want, anything that's happening in the world right now. And we had them join us last summer.

CONAN: Ev, joined us - in other words, you bought the product.

Mr. STONE: That's right.

CONAN: Okay. For those who aren't familiar with it, explain briefly how Twitter works.

Mr. STONE: It's very simple. You - we frame it around the question, what are you doing? And people answer that in 140 characters or less on their phone or on the computer. And those who are interested in their updates or tweets follow them, which basically means that I want to find out what this person is doing whenever they send one of these updates out.

CONAN: And so you can have dozens, scores, hundreds, thousands of friends.

Mr. STONE: Yes. And we - but not just friends. A lot of what you may follow may be friends, but it could be companies, it could be events, it could be all kinds of things, news. The most followed user is actually CNN Headlines. So it's an informational tool as well as a social communications tool.

CONAN: We got a tweet from Ms. Blue(ph), who tweets: Twitter is finding me new business ventures after my layoff this week. I tweeted a blog I wrote and the e-mails started coming in. And I guess that's not uncommon either.

Mr. STONE: It's not uncommon for people to, yeah, use the tool to find new work, especially these days.

CONAN: Losing Time uses it, quote, "to keep up with the state agencies in Idaho and their publications." And Mary Homan(ph) uses Twitter to follow Missouri legislature budget cuts. In 140 characters or fewer, how do you keep up with complex information like that?

Mr. STONE: Well, one of the tricks is, it's 140 characters, but some of those can be a URL. So it's really anything on the Web can be pointed to.

CONAN: So you can point people to take a look at this and you can keep track of it, but it's happening right now.

Mr. STONE: Exactly. But the 140 characters can contain a lot of information. One thing it trains people to do is be very concise and to get a point across in a very efficient way, which is, I think, people really appreciate in a -sort of a media-saturated world.

CONAN: We mentioned the crash of the airliner into the Hudson River, but it was not just that, but people using Twitter to essentially report on the news things they could see in front of them. And this was, of course, well, Mumbai, I guess, is pretty famous for that.

Mr. STONE: Yeah. I think there's something really interesting going on when you think about sort of the 175-year-old wire service. And then you think about Twitter and you think about these people all around the world reporting, as you say, Neal, on what's happening right now in front of them, what are they seeing. And you end up having this kind of new kind of wire service that's in real time that's everything that's happening in the world. And when you take into consideration search, as you mentioned before, Twitter really becomes about discovering and sharing what's happening right now.

CONAN: And other news agencies, including National Public Radio news, then getting on Twitter and finding out from people who are tweeting on the event, well, and then we contact them to talk to them and get a story from somebody who saw it firsthand.

Mr. STONE: Yeah. There's a lot of interesting ways that it complements traditional news, I think. It makes it sort of better and can be friendly.

CONAN: Let's get a caller on the line. This is Woody, Woody calling us from St. Louis.

WOODY (Caller): Hi, Neal. Thanks for taking my call.

CONAN: Sure.

WOODY: And thanks to the founders for such a cool service. I usually Twitter -I actually have three different accounts. I use it - I have a personal account. I use it for all kinds of stuff. But the other two accounts I use to promote two bands I play with. I'm actually a musician. And we use it to give updates on, you know, what members of the band are doing at any given moment, when we're in the studio, funny little snippets. It's like kind of a microblog for the fans of the band to kind of keep up with us.

CONAN: And that is not uncommon either as a sort of, well, in the case of Woody's band, yes, people are interested, but it's also a promotional device, a marketing device, if you will.

Mr. STONE: Yeah. I think in Woody's case it's a great example of, you know, sort of the range from both sort of bands and small businesses, all the way up to big businesses, using Twitter as kind of a hybrid between customer service, marketing and social elements as well.

CONAN: Woody, have you gotten more fans to come to your concerts?

WOODY: We have. And actually, it's come in handy when, you know, short notice comes up for a show; we can send out a tweet and notify the fans of the band that, hey, we're playing in their area. It's also come in handy in the rare cases where due to weather we've had to cancel a show once or twice, and it keeps people from driving clear across the county to come see us and showing up to an empty club.

CONAN: Then...

Mr. WILLIAMS: That's great.

CONAN: But then while you're playing, do you find that people in the audience are sitting there typing on their keyboards to tweet the concert?

WOODY: Well, I'm the drummer, so I don't get to see that much of the crowd...

(Soundbite of laughter)

WOODY: I'm at the back of the stage. So I'd love for that to happen, yeah. Hopefully they are.

CONAN: All right, Woody. Thanks very much and good luck to the band.

WOODY: Thank you.

CONAN: Bye-bye. Let's see if we can go now to Patrick, Patrick in Boulder, Colorado.

PATRICK (Caller): Yes. Sitting here, just looking forward to talking to Ev and Biz about making money out of Twitter.

CONAN: And how are you going to do that?

PATRICK: Okay. A couple of ways. One, you could use Twitter to replace e-mail as a direct marketing medium. You do a command as a marketer and you expect an action as a - out of that particular command, like go to a restaurant now and buy food using the special. Are people doing that these days?

Mr. WILLIAMS: Yeah. Actually, Dell computer, I believe, is doing that right now.

Mr. STONE: Yeah. Dell and a bunch of others are using it for, actually, e-commerce and taking advantage of the real-time nature to get people to literally buy things or, in other cases, just to market and get them to their Web sites.

CONAN: And the immediacy is the advantage there, that it's something going on right now?

Mr. WILLIAMS: I think there's a couple of different cases. What Dell uses it for is their outlet. So they have refurbished goods and they're in scarce supply, so people sign up to get the updates. The thing to keep in mind is unlike e-mail, Twitter is very recipient-driven, so people - that will work as long as you're offering enough value that people want to receive the information. And so in Dell's case, people want to receive these specials so they'll sign up for them and it's a win-win.

PATRICK: Have you considered building applications around that specific action?

Mr. WILLIAMS: We have, but we're - no progress to speak of there.

Mr. STONE: Yeah. I think there's a general sort of commercial usage scenario where we need to do a lot more research and talk to some of these folks who are using Twitter and finding out what value they're getting out of it and how can we make that better for them.

CONAN: Well, also - and Patrick, thanks very much for the call.

PATRICK: One quick thing, Ev and Biz, I would love to help you.

CONAN: I don't think...

Mr. STONE: Well, we are hiring.

CONAN: You are hiring.

Mr. STONE: Yes.

CONAN: One of the few companies in America that may be hiring. So I think if you go on Twitter, you might find a job opening category.

Mr. STONE: Yes, that's right.

CONAN: Good luck. And this does raise the question, though, are you guys making money on Twitter?

Mr. STONE: Well, not right now.

CONAN: Not right now. What does that mean?

Mr. STONE: Not right now. I mean the plan is to create a very sustainable, profitable, strong and independent company here in San Francisco that a lot of folks want to come work at. But our focus is on growth, growing out the network worldwide and making the service really reliable and getting back to that, like you mentioned before, that utility. You know, let's make sure that this is something you can really depend on. And then we'll begin to iterate on revenue models this year.

CONAN: And how are you paying even the few people you already have on staff if you're not making any money?

Mr. WILLIAMS: We're venture capital funded right now.

CONAN: So venture capitalists are imagining that you will find ways to monetize this utility down the road.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Yeah. And it's not unusual, of course, where the company itself is less than two years old and many of the most successful and biggest technology companies didn't focus on monetization at this stage.

CONAN: Are you worried that this is something that could be, well, the fad of the moment and six months from now the moment will have passed?

Mr. WILLIAMS: I don't think we're very worried about that. I mean, we are -that's part of the reason we're so focused on providing value to the user. And the reason we don't think it's a fad and we'll just go on is because we hear stories every day and we experience the product ourselves in changing how we communicate, changing how we get our information. And it's not a surface level thing. It's really fundamental to our daily lives. And so we have to make it better, make sure it's the best product to do that. I don't think the needs are going to go away.

CONAN: We're talking with Ev Williams and Biz Stone, two of the founders of Twitter. They are joining us today from KQED, our member station in San Francisco.

You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And let's go to Bob, Bob with us from Eton, Ohio.

BOB (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Hi.

BOB: Thanks for having me. And I was just calling, I'm a Boy Scout leader, and actually I serve on a district committee that serves a lot of Boy Scout and Cub Scout units. And we're out in a rural area where a lot of people aren't necessarily - well, let's just say they're not used to checking their e-mail a whole lot. And so when we have updates, a lot of people do carry their cell phones though, and we're just starting to use Twitter to keep our Scout leaders informed of things that are going on in the district.

CONAN: And is it working well?

BOB: I've had a positive response from a couple so far. We just started using it about three weeks ago, so we're still out there educating people. But we're hoping - we have lots of high hopes for it.

CONAN: And that's another part of this utility aspect, Biz Stone, that you're talking about. It's only a utility if almost everybody's got it.

Mr. STONE: Yeah. And I think what Bob's talking about is really excellent because, you know, one of the things that we're really inspired by at Twitter is this idea that we can extend the power of this real-time network to sort of the weakest of signals around the world. And the way you do that is you think about SMS, and you think about the four billion people on the planet who have mobile phones, and these phones have this text messaging capability, and that's really all you need to access Twitter's real-time network, and so that to us is very exciting.

CONAN: Good luck, Bob.

BOB: Thank you very much.

CONAN: And this question from the Decliner: What single greatest factor do you think flung Twitter from what was a niche user base into the mainstream?

Mr. STONE: That's an interesting question. I think that isn't one single aspect. It seems that there are a whole bunch of different things, and the easy way to answer it is just that Twitter, as Ev said, is becoming sort of fundamental to a lot of different groups and different use cases. And as those grow, as those companies, for example, find value on Twitter and want to promote it for their own purposes, we benefit. And then as celebrities use it and find it engaging, we benefit.

And as regular folks around the world like Bob, using it to, you know, sign up some of the other parents and some of the other folks in the Cub Scouts or the Boy Scouts, then we also, we continue to grow. So all these things together with Mumbai and Sully Sullenberger landing the plane in the Hudson - all this stuff, it helps Twitter grow.

CONAN: Let's go to Neddy(ph), Neddy with us from Austin, Texas.

NEDDY (Caller): Hi.

CONAN: Go ahead, please.

Mr. STONE: Hi.

NEDDY: I just wanted to talk a little bit about how novelists and writers are using Twitter. There's actually several Twitter novels that are being created by different people, including some leading journalists. There's a novel called "Small Places" that are - is being written by a news media editor, a novelist. And so I think that's a really unique way for authors to get out content, even their upcoming books that have not yet been released; they're actually creating this in 140 characters or less.

CONAN: And how do you create - write a novel at 140 characters at a time?

NEDDY: You do it 140 characters at a time. There's writers in Austin that are doing it and they each take turns and keep adding to the content.

CONAN: And you can then refer back so you can read the novel from the top and...

NEDDY: Absolutely.

CONAN: Uh-huh. All right, had you thought of literature, Ev?

Mr. WILLIAMS: We've seen that sort of thing. That shows that one of the beauties of Twitter is just how flexible it is and how people don't stick to the literal question - what are you doing. And we think that's fantastic. And fiction - there's also cases where TV shows have had characters on Twitter and sort of living out this alternative plot line that is also fiction but it adds richness and it just - just another way to use the tool. And we're all for it.

CONAN: Thanks very much, Neddy.

NEDDY: You're welcome. Thank you.

CONAN: Bye-bye. And Susanna Fox tweets that she likes to pretend she's on TALK OF THE NATION when she's tweeting, contributing what she hopes are useful comments on her field of tech and health. Sometimes you have to pretend and sometimes you don't. This is from Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. I'm using Twitter to provide customer service for Craigslist, also to support good efforts, including government transparency. So there's - the creator of one service that since become ubiquitous talking to a couple of others.

Mr. STONE: Wow.

Mr. WILLIAMS: That's great.

CONAN: Thanks very much, guys, for being with us today.

Mr. STONE: Thank you, Neal.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Thanks, Neal.

CONAN: Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the founders of Twitter. They joined us today from the studios of member station KQED in San Francisco. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.