San Francisco:
The full transcript of NDTV's exclusive interview with Evan Williams,Twitter's Co-Founder at their headquarters in San Francisco.
NDTV:It's a word on everybody's lips. You can hardly pick up a newspaper ora magazine without somebody talking about Twitter and we are verypleased to have its CEO Evan Williams join us.
Evan, first and foremost, why the name Twitter? In hindsight considering how big it has become it sounds almost flippant.
Evan:We chose the name twitter because it means communication between birds,which is why birds are also on our branding and our logo. It started asa very simple way for people to communicate and it seemed like a lightand simple term that reflected the nature of the service.
NDTV:Light and simple may be how it started but now it is huge, from it'sdebut at the music festival South by South West where it helped friendscoordinate their plans, to helping a revolution take place in Iran. ButTwitter isn't making any money yet? The company has no discerniblerevenue?
Evan: Before I get to that I think that it isimportant to understand what we are trying to do. Twitter is all aboutfostering open communication and letting as many people exchangeinformation very quickly and letting people find out what is going onabout the things they care about. That's what we are trying to do at aglobal level. That can happen either via businesses or individuals andwe are still formulating the business part of it. But there are a lotof opportunities when it comes to helping people find out what is goingon and there are definitely commercial opportunities there as well.
NDTV:15 minutes before the New York Times had the story on the crash of theplane into the Hudson on its website, it was on Twitter. Francis fromBangalore has written in on ndtv.com with a question for you. He says:Is Twitter altering conventional journalism trends?
Evan:I think it is another element in the ecosystem of media. It does notreplace journalism. There is a place for deep thought and investigativejournalism and more lengthy pieces. Twitter is limited to 140characters. But what it does is that it gives people the opportunity toshare information with a large number of people as and when they want.So the man standing on the banks of the Hudson was able to post apicture of the plane as it landed and it gives an immediacy andpersonal touch to it--that the media could not do immediately. But themedia then picks it up and it becomes a story. So it makes media moreimmediate and stories richer.
NDTV: And nothingillustrates the need for immediacy and a personal connection than whathappened during the Mumbai attacks. Mumbai was a watershed moment forTwitter, wasn't it?
Evan: Yes, it definitely was. Itrepresented a milestone for what Twitter could be. In the US, it wasThanksgiving for us and we have a feature where we can monitor whateverybody is talking about and it was all about Thanksgiving and turkeyand all. But suddenly we were like Mumbai, what? Why? Almostimmediately, as it happened we saw these reports from people on theground. So someone who has the honesty and perspective does not have tobe a journalist to share something interesting and bring real timeawareness to a situation that is new and profound.
NDTV: So where does India stand in your plans for Twitter? Do you have a specific plan for India?
Evan:We have a lot of plans for India. We are really excited about Indiaright now. From the beginning we sought to create a global informationnetwork and you can't even consider that without considering India, notonly because it is such a huge domestic market there but also becauseit is the biggest democracy. There is such a strong youth contingentand it is so vibrant and our hope is that it connects both people inIndia and India with the world with more immediacy and intimacy.
NDTV: And the fact that the growth of phone users is enormous in India - is that part of your strategy?
Evan:That is a huge part of our strategy. We started with SMS so that is whytweets are limited to 140 characters. That's why we have simplicity totweets. Even though a lot of the growth has come from the web, we havealways had this vision that we wanted to spread Twitter to the weakestconnection in the world. In India with 500 million phone users we cango from SMS to smart phone and so we think that it is really a big deal.
NDTV: But a lot of this growth in phone users in India is from rural areas. How are you going to get around the language barrier?
Evan:First of all, people can tweet in any language. And they are all overthe world and we want to make it better. We have launched a fewinterfaces and new languages. Last year we launched many new languages.
NDTV: So are we going to get them in Hindi, Malayalam or any other Indian languages?
Evan:Yes we want to support all those languages eventually. We also want touse our user base to help translate the site but then there areprobably already people tweeting in all those languages. We just wantto make it a little easier for them to get started.
NDTV:We have a very famous tweeter in India, the Minister of State forExternal Affairs Shashi Tharoor. Are you guys paying him, because he isa walking talking advertisement for Twitter in India!
Evan:No, we are not paying Mr Tharoor or any user to use Twitter. We arevery pleased that he is. We are excited that he is. We are very pleasedwhen politicians and people who have unique perspectives are sharingthat with the world and removing barriers between people in power andtheir constituents. I think that is a very powerful idea.
NDTV: You've introduced the concept of showing local trends. When will it be available for India/Indian cities?
Evan:We are working on that right now but I don't have a date for it. Wejust launched the local trends last week so that's why it may take alittle time but I think it will be soon. The local trend is based onvolume. They require a certain amount of volume in the market in orderto generate the trend since they are statistically generated and Ithink our user base in India is growing very healthily and so when itgenerates volume I think it will catch on.
NDTV: Twitterrecently changed the way you represent "suggested users" but stillthere are only 2 Indians on it. One is Shashi Tharoor and the other Ithink is Vir Sanghvi. When are you going to add some more and whatabout NDTV?
Evan: I cannot promise anything directlybecause our suggested users are algorithmically based. Another way wewant to improve the experience in India is to have local suggestedusers and to have local trends. If there is somebody who has a broad,large following then we want to inform more people about them, but itis not purely editorial.
NDTV: And most start-ups have a lot of Indians. Is that also the case at Twitter too?
Evan:Absolutely. We have a significant contingent of Indian Twitteremployees and they have all been really enthusiastic to help ourefforts in India, which have just been getting started, but it has beenmore enthusiastic than other countries that we have been expanding to.
NDTV: So why is India interesting a place to use Twitter? What is the potential?
Evan:There are all sorts of uses for Twitter in India similar to the rest ofthe world, but we know of specific uses like cricket scores that areshared over Twitter and a number of users subscribe to that. Knowingwhen trains are on time or delayed I am told would work well in India.That's happening here, and I am told this could be a killer applicationin India. People working with humanitarian aid say that in the villageswhere it is hard to get access to information, it can be sent outthrough Twitter via SMS or a phone. Our goal in expanding globally isto grow not just where there is the most people but also where we canreally change lives.
NDTV: Being updated on late trains is definitely something we can use in India. You also had Mallika Sherawat here in this office.
Evan:Yes, Mallika has been an active and interactive user of Twitter for awhile now and she dropped by our office a few months ago. It was quitefun. She taught us how to do some dancing and showed us a clip of herupcoming movie. I think everybody really enjoyed it.
NDTV:Yes, it does look like a fun place to work. All right, a lot of ourviewers wrote in on NDTV.com with questions for you. One of them asks:what would you like to see Twitter used for most?
Evan:Well, we try to be pretty agnostic about the specific uses of Twitter.One of the beauties of Twitter is that it can be used for anything.People bring their own needs and wants to Twitter and it can fill allroles. Our mission really is to foster open communication in a way thatcan change people's lives. Not just for chatting with people all overthe world but in ways that makes their lives better. It could be asimple thing like where to get lunch today as you could get a dailylunch special tweet from your favorite restaurant to gettinginformation about a global event--going back to Mumbai. Hopefully, itis all of the above.
NDTV: But when you started Twitter,you envisioned it for use on mobiles - that's why the 140 characterlimit. But now with many people going on Twitter on their computers atoffice, does that become redundant?
Evan: We did starton mobile. Specifically SMS. One of the things we did not necessarilyplan but has become a big success for Twitter is the Application Programming Interface (API) wherethird party developers have written hundreds of applications and waysto develop them on the desk top and the mobile and that has been a bigdriver of our success. But mobile is clearly the future in terms ofreaching the most people and being the most use to people in theirdaily lives. So we have never strayed from that vision, but have alwaysheld the view that it should be ubiquitous and available however peoplewant it.
NDTV: When you say ubiquitous and availablethe obvious question that comes to mind is China and the problemsGoggle is having in China. Where does Twitter stand on this issue?
Evan:We are still figuring that out. We have users in China, we have userswho use Twitter in Chinese, but so far we do not have an office inChina or a service in China so they have to decide how the internetworks in their country. We are generally in favor of the open exchangeof global information. We think that that has a positive global impact.We do not like impediments to that, whether technical or legal,
NDTV:But Twitter's big moment was the Iran election, when in the face of amedia crackdown, the average man on the streets of Iran had Twitter.What began as online chitchat for college kids, after Iran, startedbeing taken more seriously. So surely you have considered how to dealwith his problem in the future?
Evan: The Iran electionwas a big deal for Twitter in terms of a major event where this type ofcommunication was useful. We were very happy that people were able touse it and get out critical information at that time. But we wereblocked and we don't have a lot that we can do in that particularsituation, but we hope that in the long term some of these impedimentsto open communication will go away either through technical means orlegal or political means.
NDTV: Well, the State Dept isnot usually concerned with dotcom start-ups. But during the Iranelections they reached out to you and asked you delay your maintenanceupgrade so as to not disrupt service to Iranians, which you did. Didyou ever think that Twitter would be a part of US foreign policy?
Evan:To be clear we did not change our maintenance schedule simply becausethe State Department contacted us. A lot of people contacted us. It wascritical that we need to take the site down for a scheduled maintenanceand with a lot of peoples input we decided that we could move thatmaintenance window--with some difficulty-- in order to helpcommunication flow more freely in Iran. The Obama administration or theState Department does not have direct influence over what we do but Ithink that what they have indicated--through their own use of Twitterand support for other start ups--that they think that technology isgood for American and the rest of the world to foster communication.That is an ideal that they can get behind.
NDTV: The State Department also used Twitter to raise money for Haiti?
Evan:Raising money on Twitter is one of a number of things that we have seenthat can happen when people have a very easy way to express themselves.One of our beliefs is that more good things can happen. People want todo good things, they just need a prod sometimes, and what Twitter andother technologies that connect people are showing us is that if youmake it a little easier for people then you will enable them to do whatthey want to-do, to help people out, to form groups and do good. In thebest case what people will say about Twitter is that it is not atriumph of technology but a triumph of humanity.
NDTV: So why is Twitter the medium of the moment? Why does it seem like thetime is right for Twitter or that Twitter is right for the times welive in?
Evan: I think Twitter is popular and growingbecause it serves some basic human needs. From the basic, this isvaluable information that helps one make choices and keeps oneinformed, to the desire to express oneself and reach other people andhave influence. These are things that people have always wanted to do.They are innate and universal. Biz (Stone and I have been working onthis for over a decade--tools that allow people to do this. So it'ssort of a natural evolution. It's getting easier, more widespread andmore global.
NDTV: But it is not all laurels forTwitter. In the US, there was a controversy over a woman who tweetedafter her son died. Is micro bogging being overused or do you welcomeall sorts of tweets?
Evan: We certainly welcome allsorts of tweets and everybody has to decide what they are comfortablesharing. Collectively, society is learning new norms about what toshare and what not too. Because Twitter taps into some basic humanneeds--the desire to connect, people are going to have differentstandards for that. So a woman tweeting after her sons death isobviously a tragic situation and she was probably look for what allpeople look for-- a connection and empathy, and that is perfectlyunderstandable. We do not place any judgments on that. It goes back toour belief that sharing information in general has a positive effect.
NDTV:But considering that we are not really talking to people we know manysay this is just a platform for self-promotion. Is that also a basichuman need?
Evan: It is partially that for some people.Again, people bring their own needs and wants to twitter. Part of thebeauty of Twitter is that you can say things and those who want cantune in and you are not obligated because you know someone you have tolisten to what they have to say and vice versa. It is part of the waywe set it up. So it really is a meritocracy where the informationhopefully gets to whoever is interested in it. Connections are formedsometimes based on real world scenarios and sometimes based on justsome one who shares the same interest as you, and it does not have tobe self promotional.
NDTV: All right, Evan. Lets try goback to the piece of information that everybody wants from you, howdoes a company like Twitter run. Where does the money come from?
Evan:All right, there are a few ways that we plan to make some money. We aremaking money right now through deals that we have done. We have notrolled out our real long-term revenue generating services but thethesis is pretty simple. First of all, there is a lot of commercialactivity on Twitter today. When you take the concept of immediateinformation and communication tool it is natural that it is used forbusinesses and people are tuning in. There are major brands that areusing it from Coca Cola, Comcast to Jet Blue to other major airlineswho are sharing information with their customers, to other localsmaller businesses who for the first time are getting a communicationchannel to people who come to their flower shop or restaurant forexample. It is a two-way communication. That is vital. It is not justadvertising but it is a way to get feedback and information from yourcustomer base, which you were not able to do before. So thousands ofbusinesses are doing that and finding value in it. The customers arefinding value in it because the nature of Twitter is that if people arenot opting in to see what you have to say then you are not reaching anybody. That is happening organically with the tools. It has happenedalmost from day one. If we are able to create that value then there isdefinitely a business there for us. So it is definitely an evolution.We are building better tools for those businesses. We are also buildinga way to get information back to you. A lot of the information you areinterested in is commercial in nature. The way Google does it that I doa search for some thing and it shows up and it happens to be an ad thatsome one paid for. We are trying to do the same for Twitter because Iam explicitly saying that I am interested in this because I amsearching for it so there is clear value there and clear intentions andso there are ways to make money
NDTV: So are you considering embracing Twitter ads?
Evan: We are definitely looking at ads and we are trying to do so in a way that is very organic to Twitter and adds user value.
NDTV: And these big companies you mentioned, are they paying for this service?
Evan:They are not paying for it today, no. We have plans to make a betterproduct for them. To try and make what they do easier and moreefficient and transient and also gives them feedback. Because if youget feedback from your customers it's a signal, so there are analyticsin that. So if they are adding value to users there is a product forthat, and they will definitely pay for that.
NDTV: Allright, you are clearly keeping your cards close to your chest on thatone. OK so Twitter is growing so fast that short outages are notunusual. What do you say to Venture capital firms and your users whoraise this issue?
Evan: We are making progress. We arenot where we should be. Our goal is to make a very reliable product, acommunication service that you know is always there and we have notreached that goal yet. We started out as a very small startup. As yousaid it grew very fast and the big challenge is to make it work atscale and that is something that we will get to. The charts have shownthat we have gotten better over time. Soon, we think it will not be aquestion any more.
NDTV: Ok, lets go back to a questionour readers of ndtv.com had. Kunal asks what do you feel about the roleTwitter is playing in news gathering and news creation?
Evan:I think it adds to news gathering and news creation. Not just does itadd to what already going on. It also gives a better form for certaintypes of information like cricket scores being sent to on twitter. It'sa great format for that because it is very short and it is veryimmediate. It is some thing that you can get throughout the day and youdon't need a paper for that
NDTV: But how do you verifythe authenticity of Tweets. How can it be a part of news gathering ifit is impossible to authenticate sources?
Evan: Part ofit is that people are able to opt in to whatever information theytrust. There is no way to guarantee authenticity across the boardone-way or the other. Traditional news is often full of mistakes but Ithink that people are getting more sophisticated in knowing what totrust and what not to trust. My strong belief-- in being in bloggingbefore Twitter-- is that in trying to create more information outthere, in trying to create the democratization of media in general, isthat the more voices there are out there then the likelihood is thatthe truth bubbles up to the top. Because if you only have a few voices,even if they are not corrupt, if they are wrong, which happens onoccasion you have fewer people to correct them. So in general whilethere is a lot of misinformation out there the forces ofdemocratization help truth find the light.
NDTV: ButTwitter has become an important marketing tool for celebrities andpoliticians. It gives you a level of intimacy with these stars that wasnever possible before but that's also why there are so manyimpersonators out there. How does the reader know that when SRK says heenjoyed ringing the bell at the NASDAQ it is really him?
Evan:Impersonation is against our terms of service. We have a "verificationof accounts" process that we do, where we get in contact with a personbehind the account - If it is a famous person - and we verify whom theyare and we take down other impersonations accounts when we are madeaware of them. So look out for the blue check mark on the personsaccount. We cannot do it for everyone but we are looking at ways toscale that. But trust also builds up over time just like it does inthe real world. If you are talking to someone who you just met on thestreet for the first time you will have a trust filter as compared tosome one which you know very well. The same thing happens on Twitter.You have different levels of trust for every tweet that you see basedon the context and whom it has come from.
NDTV: Twitterforced an undisclosed number of users to change their passwords thisweek after it was hacked. How do you tackle that problem?
Evan:That is definitely one of the unfortunate aspects of systems likeTwitter. It is not unique to Twitter. Every major communication tool onthe Internet has spam and abuse problems. All email services, bloggingservices and social networks have to dedicate a significant amount ofresources and time to fighting abuse and protecting their users. Thatis nature of the business. We have a significant team at Twitter -called the trust and safety team - which works on fighting both manualand technical abuse.
NDTV: So one of our readers onndtv.com Priya asks--how powerful a force is Twitter in terms ofshaping the way the Internet is used today?
Evan: It ishard to say how powerful it is. It has definitely influenced a lot ofcompanies and tools and is being built into a lot of other tools andservices. The Internet is a very big ecosystem where a lot of thingsinfluence everything else. A part of the beauty and complexity of allthese services is that they can talk to each other now so I would saywe all influence each other.
NDTV: Tanmay from Dubai asks what is the most surprising step in Twitter's evolution for you?
Evan:There have been many surprising steps. Twitter really evolved sincewhat we thought about it from the beginning. Early on we thought it wasmostly a social communication system for sharing SMS's and statusupdates from people you know. Since then many milestones have beenpassed. Users and developers have taught us new uses for it. FromMumbai, to raising money in Haiti. South by SouthWest was a bigmilestone early on--a music and technology conference where a criticalmass of people were sharing information about the event as it was goingon. Whether or not you know the person, if you were interested in theevent or were part of the event then these tweets were interesting toyou. That taught us that sharing information real time has informationbeyond the social context. There have been many other milestones.Eventually we brought another company called Summize- a real timeTwitter search engine that we have since built into the product andthat led us to all sorts of new scenarios. For example there was a gasshortage in Atlanta and people were using Twitter to inform others ofwhere gas was available using a hashtag (#atlgas). A hashtag is againone of the things that users invented. So we had complete strangershelping each other. Things like that have happened over and over thatwe would have never thought of and we see them every day.
NDTV: Whatdo you say to criticism that Twitter is dumbing things down andshortening already short attention spans. How does one say anythingmeaningful in 140 characters?
Evan: We don't take thatlightly. Our goal at twitter is to improve people's attention and placeattention on the right things. There is definitely a lot of potentialwith technologies like Twitter. With the incredible amount of media weare exposed to we get a little bit caught up with what is the newthing, what's the new info. That is not what we are into. We hope thatwe can build technology and better filtering that will allow people toreally focus on what matters to them. That is really the long termproduct and technology pattern for Twitter getting better and better atharnessing this information, not just to put more stuff in front ofpeople. So there is constantly something new but what out of thismorass is really valuable to me? What is the meaning that is coming outof all this information?
NDTV: The Internet has been nominated for the '2010 Nobel Peace Prize'. Do you think this is a legitimate entry?
Evan:It seems strange because the Internet is really people. The world isthe Internet. It is a living-breathing organism. It goes back to what Iwas saying that Twitter is going to be a triumph of humanity ratherthan of technology. To say that the internet is the prize winner wouldbe put technology before the people who make it what it is so that doesnot make that much sense to me.
NDTV: Twitter now is three years old. In dog years and the life cycle of startup is quite a long time. What's next for Twitter?
Evan:In so many ways we feel like we are just getting started. We have hadthree amazing years. We have built a substantial user base and asubstantial team-- although we are still just over 120 people workingon Twitter, which is huge compared to how big we were a year ago, buttiny compared to the size of other companies that are trying to have asimilar impact. So our long term plan is to build a sustaining companyof enduring value. It will probably be a large company because thepotential is so big and because the needs of things to build and theusers to support are so large. We are just getting started with thetechnology itself. We started with a very simple idea of sending theseshort messages but now that we have a bunch of people sendinginformation there is so much more that we can build out of that. Wehave a billion ideas. We are just trying to do them one step at a time.
NDTV: Finally how good of a tweeter are you and how many followers do you have?
Evan: I have just over a million followers but I could be better. There are much better people than me.
NDTV: How does one get better? How can be witty consistently in 140 characters?
Evan:It should just be natural. I encourage people to not put too muchthought into and just really share what is on your mind. If you startthinking about it too much or worrying if it is a good tweet then youlose the spontaneity and the authenticity of the medium, which isreally what makes it shine.
NDTV: And who do you follow? Any recommendations?
Evan:Gosh, I hate to recommend any one in particular. I follow friends,family, industry people, Mallika Sherawat, and Bollywood people, Indianpeople, a wide variety.
NDTV: All right, lets end with aquestion from one of our viewers. Nishant asks do you ever feel thatyou're living out the script of the ultimate start-up company story?
Evan:Well, we definitely feel that we are very fortunate. I don't know ifthere is an ultimate start up story. A lot of people here have hadamazing rides. But Twitter really has had a trajectory that we wouldnot have predicted and we definitely think that we are just gettingstarted.
NDTV: Evan Williams Thank you and all the best for you chapter in India.
Evan: Thank you, we are very much looking forward to expanding in India.
NDTV:It's a word on everybody's lips. You can hardly pick up a newspaper ora magazine without somebody talking about Twitter and we are verypleased to have its CEO Evan Williams join us.
Evan, first and foremost, why the name Twitter? In hindsight considering how big it has become it sounds almost flippant.
Evan:We chose the name twitter because it means communication between birds,which is why birds are also on our branding and our logo. It started asa very simple way for people to communicate and it seemed like a lightand simple term that reflected the nature of the service.
NDTV:Light and simple may be how it started but now it is huge, from it'sdebut at the music festival South by South West where it helped friendscoordinate their plans, to helping a revolution take place in Iran. ButTwitter isn't making any money yet? The company has no discerniblerevenue?
Evan: Before I get to that I think that it isimportant to understand what we are trying to do. Twitter is all aboutfostering open communication and letting as many people exchangeinformation very quickly and letting people find out what is going onabout the things they care about. That's what we are trying to do at aglobal level. That can happen either via businesses or individuals andwe are still formulating the business part of it. But there are a lotof opportunities when it comes to helping people find out what is goingon and there are definitely commercial opportunities there as well.
NDTV:15 minutes before the New York Times had the story on the crash of theplane into the Hudson on its website, it was on Twitter. Francis fromBangalore has written in on ndtv.com with a question for you. He says:Is Twitter altering conventional journalism trends?
Evan:I think it is another element in the ecosystem of media. It does notreplace journalism. There is a place for deep thought and investigativejournalism and more lengthy pieces. Twitter is limited to 140characters. But what it does is that it gives people the opportunity toshare information with a large number of people as and when they want.So the man standing on the banks of the Hudson was able to post apicture of the plane as it landed and it gives an immediacy andpersonal touch to it--that the media could not do immediately. But themedia then picks it up and it becomes a story. So it makes media moreimmediate and stories richer.
NDTV: And nothingillustrates the need for immediacy and a personal connection than whathappened during the Mumbai attacks. Mumbai was a watershed moment forTwitter, wasn't it?
Evan: Yes, it definitely was. Itrepresented a milestone for what Twitter could be. In the US, it wasThanksgiving for us and we have a feature where we can monitor whateverybody is talking about and it was all about Thanksgiving and turkeyand all. But suddenly we were like Mumbai, what? Why? Almostimmediately, as it happened we saw these reports from people on theground. So someone who has the honesty and perspective does not have tobe a journalist to share something interesting and bring real timeawareness to a situation that is new and profound.
NDTV: So where does India stand in your plans for Twitter? Do you have a specific plan for India?
Evan:We have a lot of plans for India. We are really excited about Indiaright now. From the beginning we sought to create a global informationnetwork and you can't even consider that without considering India, notonly because it is such a huge domestic market there but also becauseit is the biggest democracy. There is such a strong youth contingentand it is so vibrant and our hope is that it connects both people inIndia and India with the world with more immediacy and intimacy.
NDTV: And the fact that the growth of phone users is enormous in India - is that part of your strategy?
Evan:That is a huge part of our strategy. We started with SMS so that is whytweets are limited to 140 characters. That's why we have simplicity totweets. Even though a lot of the growth has come from the web, we havealways had this vision that we wanted to spread Twitter to the weakestconnection in the world. In India with 500 million phone users we cango from SMS to smart phone and so we think that it is really a big deal.
NDTV: But a lot of this growth in phone users in India is from rural areas. How are you going to get around the language barrier?
Evan:First of all, people can tweet in any language. And they are all overthe world and we want to make it better. We have launched a fewinterfaces and new languages. Last year we launched many new languages.
NDTV: So are we going to get them in Hindi, Malayalam or any other Indian languages?
Evan:Yes we want to support all those languages eventually. We also want touse our user base to help translate the site but then there areprobably already people tweeting in all those languages. We just wantto make it a little easier for them to get started.
NDTV:We have a very famous tweeter in India, the Minister of State forExternal Affairs Shashi Tharoor. Are you guys paying him, because he isa walking talking advertisement for Twitter in India!
Evan:No, we are not paying Mr Tharoor or any user to use Twitter. We arevery pleased that he is. We are excited that he is. We are very pleasedwhen politicians and people who have unique perspectives are sharingthat with the world and removing barriers between people in power andtheir constituents. I think that is a very powerful idea.
NDTV: You've introduced the concept of showing local trends. When will it be available for India/Indian cities?
Evan:We are working on that right now but I don't have a date for it. Wejust launched the local trends last week so that's why it may take alittle time but I think it will be soon. The local trend is based onvolume. They require a certain amount of volume in the market in orderto generate the trend since they are statistically generated and Ithink our user base in India is growing very healthily and so when itgenerates volume I think it will catch on.
NDTV: Twitterrecently changed the way you represent "suggested users" but stillthere are only 2 Indians on it. One is Shashi Tharoor and the other Ithink is Vir Sanghvi. When are you going to add some more and whatabout NDTV?
Evan: I cannot promise anything directlybecause our suggested users are algorithmically based. Another way wewant to improve the experience in India is to have local suggestedusers and to have local trends. If there is somebody who has a broad,large following then we want to inform more people about them, but itis not purely editorial.
NDTV: And most start-ups have a lot of Indians. Is that also the case at Twitter too?
Evan:Absolutely. We have a significant contingent of Indian Twitteremployees and they have all been really enthusiastic to help ourefforts in India, which have just been getting started, but it has beenmore enthusiastic than other countries that we have been expanding to.
NDTV: So why is India interesting a place to use Twitter? What is the potential?
Evan:There are all sorts of uses for Twitter in India similar to the rest ofthe world, but we know of specific uses like cricket scores that areshared over Twitter and a number of users subscribe to that. Knowingwhen trains are on time or delayed I am told would work well in India.That's happening here, and I am told this could be a killer applicationin India. People working with humanitarian aid say that in the villageswhere it is hard to get access to information, it can be sent outthrough Twitter via SMS or a phone. Our goal in expanding globally isto grow not just where there is the most people but also where we canreally change lives.
NDTV: Being updated on late trains is definitely something we can use in India. You also had Mallika Sherawat here in this office.
Evan:Yes, Mallika has been an active and interactive user of Twitter for awhile now and she dropped by our office a few months ago. It was quitefun. She taught us how to do some dancing and showed us a clip of herupcoming movie. I think everybody really enjoyed it.
NDTV:Yes, it does look like a fun place to work. All right, a lot of ourviewers wrote in on NDTV.com with questions for you. One of them asks:what would you like to see Twitter used for most?
Evan:Well, we try to be pretty agnostic about the specific uses of Twitter.One of the beauties of Twitter is that it can be used for anything.People bring their own needs and wants to Twitter and it can fill allroles. Our mission really is to foster open communication in a way thatcan change people's lives. Not just for chatting with people all overthe world but in ways that makes their lives better. It could be asimple thing like where to get lunch today as you could get a dailylunch special tweet from your favorite restaurant to gettinginformation about a global event--going back to Mumbai. Hopefully, itis all of the above.
NDTV: But when you started Twitter,you envisioned it for use on mobiles - that's why the 140 characterlimit. But now with many people going on Twitter on their computers atoffice, does that become redundant?
Evan: We did starton mobile. Specifically SMS. One of the things we did not necessarilyplan but has become a big success for Twitter is the Application Programming Interface (API) wherethird party developers have written hundreds of applications and waysto develop them on the desk top and the mobile and that has been a bigdriver of our success. But mobile is clearly the future in terms ofreaching the most people and being the most use to people in theirdaily lives. So we have never strayed from that vision, but have alwaysheld the view that it should be ubiquitous and available however peoplewant it.
NDTV: When you say ubiquitous and availablethe obvious question that comes to mind is China and the problemsGoggle is having in China. Where does Twitter stand on this issue?
Evan:We are still figuring that out. We have users in China, we have userswho use Twitter in Chinese, but so far we do not have an office inChina or a service in China so they have to decide how the internetworks in their country. We are generally in favor of the open exchangeof global information. We think that that has a positive global impact.We do not like impediments to that, whether technical or legal,
NDTV:But Twitter's big moment was the Iran election, when in the face of amedia crackdown, the average man on the streets of Iran had Twitter.What began as online chitchat for college kids, after Iran, startedbeing taken more seriously. So surely you have considered how to dealwith his problem in the future?
Evan: The Iran electionwas a big deal for Twitter in terms of a major event where this type ofcommunication was useful. We were very happy that people were able touse it and get out critical information at that time. But we wereblocked and we don't have a lot that we can do in that particularsituation, but we hope that in the long term some of these impedimentsto open communication will go away either through technical means orlegal or political means.
NDTV: Well, the State Dept isnot usually concerned with dotcom start-ups. But during the Iranelections they reached out to you and asked you delay your maintenanceupgrade so as to not disrupt service to Iranians, which you did. Didyou ever think that Twitter would be a part of US foreign policy?
Evan:To be clear we did not change our maintenance schedule simply becausethe State Department contacted us. A lot of people contacted us. It wascritical that we need to take the site down for a scheduled maintenanceand with a lot of peoples input we decided that we could move thatmaintenance window--with some difficulty-- in order to helpcommunication flow more freely in Iran. The Obama administration or theState Department does not have direct influence over what we do but Ithink that what they have indicated--through their own use of Twitterand support for other start ups--that they think that technology isgood for American and the rest of the world to foster communication.That is an ideal that they can get behind.
NDTV: The State Department also used Twitter to raise money for Haiti?
Evan:Raising money on Twitter is one of a number of things that we have seenthat can happen when people have a very easy way to express themselves.One of our beliefs is that more good things can happen. People want todo good things, they just need a prod sometimes, and what Twitter andother technologies that connect people are showing us is that if youmake it a little easier for people then you will enable them to do whatthey want to-do, to help people out, to form groups and do good. In thebest case what people will say about Twitter is that it is not atriumph of technology but a triumph of humanity.
NDTV: So why is Twitter the medium of the moment? Why does it seem like thetime is right for Twitter or that Twitter is right for the times welive in?
Evan: I think Twitter is popular and growingbecause it serves some basic human needs. From the basic, this isvaluable information that helps one make choices and keeps oneinformed, to the desire to express oneself and reach other people andhave influence. These are things that people have always wanted to do.They are innate and universal. Biz (Stone and I have been working onthis for over a decade--tools that allow people to do this. So it'ssort of a natural evolution. It's getting easier, more widespread andmore global.
NDTV: But it is not all laurels forTwitter. In the US, there was a controversy over a woman who tweetedafter her son died. Is micro bogging being overused or do you welcomeall sorts of tweets?
Evan: We certainly welcome allsorts of tweets and everybody has to decide what they are comfortablesharing. Collectively, society is learning new norms about what toshare and what not too. Because Twitter taps into some basic humanneeds--the desire to connect, people are going to have differentstandards for that. So a woman tweeting after her sons death isobviously a tragic situation and she was probably look for what allpeople look for-- a connection and empathy, and that is perfectlyunderstandable. We do not place any judgments on that. It goes back toour belief that sharing information in general has a positive effect.
NDTV:But considering that we are not really talking to people we know manysay this is just a platform for self-promotion. Is that also a basichuman need?
Evan: It is partially that for some people.Again, people bring their own needs and wants to twitter. Part of thebeauty of Twitter is that you can say things and those who want cantune in and you are not obligated because you know someone you have tolisten to what they have to say and vice versa. It is part of the waywe set it up. So it really is a meritocracy where the informationhopefully gets to whoever is interested in it. Connections are formedsometimes based on real world scenarios and sometimes based on justsome one who shares the same interest as you, and it does not have tobe self promotional.
NDTV: All right, Evan. Lets try goback to the piece of information that everybody wants from you, howdoes a company like Twitter run. Where does the money come from?
Evan:All right, there are a few ways that we plan to make some money. We aremaking money right now through deals that we have done. We have notrolled out our real long-term revenue generating services but thethesis is pretty simple. First of all, there is a lot of commercialactivity on Twitter today. When you take the concept of immediateinformation and communication tool it is natural that it is used forbusinesses and people are tuning in. There are major brands that areusing it from Coca Cola, Comcast to Jet Blue to other major airlineswho are sharing information with their customers, to other localsmaller businesses who for the first time are getting a communicationchannel to people who come to their flower shop or restaurant forexample. It is a two-way communication. That is vital. It is not justadvertising but it is a way to get feedback and information from yourcustomer base, which you were not able to do before. So thousands ofbusinesses are doing that and finding value in it. The customers arefinding value in it because the nature of Twitter is that if people arenot opting in to see what you have to say then you are not reaching anybody. That is happening organically with the tools. It has happenedalmost from day one. If we are able to create that value then there isdefinitely a business there for us. So it is definitely an evolution.We are building better tools for those businesses. We are also buildinga way to get information back to you. A lot of the information you areinterested in is commercial in nature. The way Google does it that I doa search for some thing and it shows up and it happens to be an ad thatsome one paid for. We are trying to do the same for Twitter because Iam explicitly saying that I am interested in this because I amsearching for it so there is clear value there and clear intentions andso there are ways to make money
NDTV: So are you considering embracing Twitter ads?
Evan: We are definitely looking at ads and we are trying to do so in a way that is very organic to Twitter and adds user value.
NDTV: And these big companies you mentioned, are they paying for this service?
Evan:They are not paying for it today, no. We have plans to make a betterproduct for them. To try and make what they do easier and moreefficient and transient and also gives them feedback. Because if youget feedback from your customers it's a signal, so there are analyticsin that. So if they are adding value to users there is a product forthat, and they will definitely pay for that.
NDTV: Allright, you are clearly keeping your cards close to your chest on thatone. OK so Twitter is growing so fast that short outages are notunusual. What do you say to Venture capital firms and your users whoraise this issue?
Evan: We are making progress. We arenot where we should be. Our goal is to make a very reliable product, acommunication service that you know is always there and we have notreached that goal yet. We started out as a very small startup. As yousaid it grew very fast and the big challenge is to make it work atscale and that is something that we will get to. The charts have shownthat we have gotten better over time. Soon, we think it will not be aquestion any more.
NDTV: Ok, lets go back to a questionour readers of ndtv.com had. Kunal asks what do you feel about the roleTwitter is playing in news gathering and news creation?
Evan:I think it adds to news gathering and news creation. Not just does itadd to what already going on. It also gives a better form for certaintypes of information like cricket scores being sent to on twitter. It'sa great format for that because it is very short and it is veryimmediate. It is some thing that you can get throughout the day and youdon't need a paper for that
NDTV: But how do you verifythe authenticity of Tweets. How can it be a part of news gathering ifit is impossible to authenticate sources?
Evan: Part ofit is that people are able to opt in to whatever information theytrust. There is no way to guarantee authenticity across the boardone-way or the other. Traditional news is often full of mistakes but Ithink that people are getting more sophisticated in knowing what totrust and what not to trust. My strong belief-- in being in bloggingbefore Twitter-- is that in trying to create more information outthere, in trying to create the democratization of media in general, isthat the more voices there are out there then the likelihood is thatthe truth bubbles up to the top. Because if you only have a few voices,even if they are not corrupt, if they are wrong, which happens onoccasion you have fewer people to correct them. So in general whilethere is a lot of misinformation out there the forces ofdemocratization help truth find the light.
NDTV: ButTwitter has become an important marketing tool for celebrities andpoliticians. It gives you a level of intimacy with these stars that wasnever possible before but that's also why there are so manyimpersonators out there. How does the reader know that when SRK says heenjoyed ringing the bell at the NASDAQ it is really him?
Evan:Impersonation is against our terms of service. We have a "verificationof accounts" process that we do, where we get in contact with a personbehind the account - If it is a famous person - and we verify whom theyare and we take down other impersonations accounts when we are madeaware of them. So look out for the blue check mark on the personsaccount. We cannot do it for everyone but we are looking at ways toscale that. But trust also builds up over time just like it does inthe real world. If you are talking to someone who you just met on thestreet for the first time you will have a trust filter as compared tosome one which you know very well. The same thing happens on Twitter.You have different levels of trust for every tweet that you see basedon the context and whom it has come from.
NDTV: Twitterforced an undisclosed number of users to change their passwords thisweek after it was hacked. How do you tackle that problem?
Evan:That is definitely one of the unfortunate aspects of systems likeTwitter. It is not unique to Twitter. Every major communication tool onthe Internet has spam and abuse problems. All email services, bloggingservices and social networks have to dedicate a significant amount ofresources and time to fighting abuse and protecting their users. Thatis nature of the business. We have a significant team at Twitter -called the trust and safety team - which works on fighting both manualand technical abuse.
NDTV: So one of our readers onndtv.com Priya asks--how powerful a force is Twitter in terms ofshaping the way the Internet is used today?
Evan: It ishard to say how powerful it is. It has definitely influenced a lot ofcompanies and tools and is being built into a lot of other tools andservices. The Internet is a very big ecosystem where a lot of thingsinfluence everything else. A part of the beauty and complexity of allthese services is that they can talk to each other now so I would saywe all influence each other.
NDTV: Tanmay from Dubai asks what is the most surprising step in Twitter's evolution for you?
Evan:There have been many surprising steps. Twitter really evolved sincewhat we thought about it from the beginning. Early on we thought it wasmostly a social communication system for sharing SMS's and statusupdates from people you know. Since then many milestones have beenpassed. Users and developers have taught us new uses for it. FromMumbai, to raising money in Haiti. South by SouthWest was a bigmilestone early on--a music and technology conference where a criticalmass of people were sharing information about the event as it was goingon. Whether or not you know the person, if you were interested in theevent or were part of the event then these tweets were interesting toyou. That taught us that sharing information real time has informationbeyond the social context. There have been many other milestones.Eventually we brought another company called Summize- a real timeTwitter search engine that we have since built into the product andthat led us to all sorts of new scenarios. For example there was a gasshortage in Atlanta and people were using Twitter to inform others ofwhere gas was available using a hashtag (#atlgas). A hashtag is againone of the things that users invented. So we had complete strangershelping each other. Things like that have happened over and over thatwe would have never thought of and we see them every day.
NDTV: Whatdo you say to criticism that Twitter is dumbing things down andshortening already short attention spans. How does one say anythingmeaningful in 140 characters?
Evan: We don't take thatlightly. Our goal at twitter is to improve people's attention and placeattention on the right things. There is definitely a lot of potentialwith technologies like Twitter. With the incredible amount of media weare exposed to we get a little bit caught up with what is the newthing, what's the new info. That is not what we are into. We hope thatwe can build technology and better filtering that will allow people toreally focus on what matters to them. That is really the long termproduct and technology pattern for Twitter getting better and better atharnessing this information, not just to put more stuff in front ofpeople. So there is constantly something new but what out of thismorass is really valuable to me? What is the meaning that is coming outof all this information?
NDTV: The Internet has been nominated for the '2010 Nobel Peace Prize'. Do you think this is a legitimate entry?
Evan:It seems strange because the Internet is really people. The world isthe Internet. It is a living-breathing organism. It goes back to what Iwas saying that Twitter is going to be a triumph of humanity ratherthan of technology. To say that the internet is the prize winner wouldbe put technology before the people who make it what it is so that doesnot make that much sense to me.
NDTV: Twitter now is three years old. In dog years and the life cycle of startup is quite a long time. What's next for Twitter?
Evan:In so many ways we feel like we are just getting started. We have hadthree amazing years. We have built a substantial user base and asubstantial team-- although we are still just over 120 people workingon Twitter, which is huge compared to how big we were a year ago, buttiny compared to the size of other companies that are trying to have asimilar impact. So our long term plan is to build a sustaining companyof enduring value. It will probably be a large company because thepotential is so big and because the needs of things to build and theusers to support are so large. We are just getting started with thetechnology itself. We started with a very simple idea of sending theseshort messages but now that we have a bunch of people sendinginformation there is so much more that we can build out of that. Wehave a billion ideas. We are just trying to do them one step at a time.
NDTV: Finally how good of a tweeter are you and how many followers do you have?
Evan: I have just over a million followers but I could be better. There are much better people than me.
NDTV: How does one get better? How can be witty consistently in 140 characters?
Evan:It should just be natural. I encourage people to not put too muchthought into and just really share what is on your mind. If you startthinking about it too much or worrying if it is a good tweet then youlose the spontaneity and the authenticity of the medium, which isreally what makes it shine.
NDTV: And who do you follow? Any recommendations?
Evan:Gosh, I hate to recommend any one in particular. I follow friends,family, industry people, Mallika Sherawat, and Bollywood people, Indianpeople, a wide variety.
NDTV: All right, lets end with aquestion from one of our viewers. Nishant asks do you ever feel thatyou're living out the script of the ultimate start-up company story?
Evan:Well, we definitely feel that we are very fortunate. I don't know ifthere is an ultimate start up story. A lot of people here have hadamazing rides. But Twitter really has had a trajectory that we wouldnot have predicted and we definitely think that we are just gettingstarted.
NDTV: Evan Williams Thank you and all the best for you chapter in India.
Evan: Thank you, we are very much looking forward to expanding in India.
