Transcript: LunchMeet: Twitter is the Obvious Choice

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1607/lunchmeet-twitter-is-the-obvious-choice

Guest: Biz Stone - Obvious
Guest: Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Guest: Evan Williams - Obvious
Host: Eddie Codel - PodTech
Host: Irina Slutsky - PodTech

Eddie Codel - PodTech
So Irina, where are we?

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
We are at South Park.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
In San Francisco.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
In San Francisco, for LunchMeet.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Isn't it also known as the Web 2.0 playground?

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
It's where the cool kids are back in play.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
With their Ajax, their routing (Inaudible) corners, and their other Web 2.0 type stuff.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Gooey things and all kinds of good stuff.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Rigth. So we're going to go and talk to the guys behind Twitter, which have an office here in South Park.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Yes, and I can't wait.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Let's go do that.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Okay.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
All right.
Hi, welcome to LunchMeet, I'm Eddie Codel.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Irina Slutsky.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Today we're in the office of Twitter.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Yes we are, and please introduce yourself.

Biz Stone - Obvious
I'm Biz Stone.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
I'm Jack Dorsey.

Evan Williams - Obvious
Evan Williams.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Who are you, what do you do at Twitter?

Biz Stone - Obvious
I'm Biz Stone.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
He's so funny.

Biz Stone - Obvious
I'm actually a -- I'm an employee of Obvious, which is the company that owns Twitter.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
And Odeo.

Biz Stone - Obvious
And Odeo. I'm just spending a lot of time working on Twitter.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
I am doing the same thing. I do some of the code as well and the web design.

Evan Williams - Obvious
I just take the glory for these guys.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
You made it up, right, it's all your fault?

Evan Williams - Obvious
No, I didn't, it's more of Jack's fault, but I'm the founder of Obvious, and do various things.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Can you just talk quickly about how Obvious connects with Odeo and Twitter and sort of what that is?

Evan Williams - Obvious
Sure. So Obvious is a new company that we just started two months ago, and it was a spin out really of Odeo Inc, a previous company which made Odeo.com, and also made Twitter for about the last six months. We recently did a restructuring where it's under -- both products are under this new company called Obvious. It's basically the same people working on the same stuff, but it's a new company and a new structure.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Okay. What has changed with Odeo? We won't get into Odeo, because this is about Twitter, but I'm just curious because I know that there's been -- you guys were in another office not long ago and Obvious is new, so what's changed with the dynamics with Odeo?

Evan Williams - Obvious
Right. So, what changed basically is, I bought the assets of the company from the investors, and basically we wanted to pursue a different path than we were on with Odeo. Odeo is still a decent sized product and growing, and it still receives a bunch of our efforts, and we're still working on that. In the future we plan to have other products, so the idea for Obvious is, its multi-product Web company, and we're just going to pursue cool stuff that we think is fun.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Okay.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
You guys work on Odeo as well?

Biz Stone - Obvious
Mostly Twitter these days but...

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Focusing mostly on Twitter.

Biz Stone - Obvious
...but some of the (Voice Overlap)

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Before we get going, can you tell us what Twitter is, because some people who are watching may not even know what Twitter is?

Evan Williams - Obvious
Absolutely.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Twitter is a way to keep connected with your friends, it's a way to -- it's basically mini Blogging, it's a very low barrier to entry way to Blog what you're thinking about anywhere, from your phone, (Voice Overlap).

Eddie Codel - PodTech
I prefer to refer to as Microblogging.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Microblogging, yeah.

Biz Stone - Obvious
People actually Twitter about blogging, they say I'm updating my Blogger.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
How does it differ from a traditional Blog or how is it similar?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
We have some different input methods, the major one being the phone. We also have IM. The other major constraint is we limit everything to 160 characters.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Okay.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
So these are very short-focused updates, and they're usually personal, and they're usually about just random things you're doing during the day, instead of being a very composed article or a normal Blog post.

Evan Williams - Obvious
Another way that people would put it is, present-tense blogging, or blogging -- even if it's a journal type blogging, you might write about the things in the past, whether they were yesterday or -- whenever -- Twitter for most part is about what you're doing right now, like having been interviewed for LunchMeet would be a Twitter that (Voice Overlap)

Eddie Codel - PodTech
So we could Twitter literally a twitter (ph) now.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Yeah, right now.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
It's also about receiving what your friends are doing right now, which is the other side of it.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
What was the inspiration for that, like how did you -- why did you think that was something that you needed to make?

Evan Williams - Obvious
Jack.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
I was an early adapter on live turn on (Inaudible), I was just thrilled with the personal connection a Friend's page would give me, but it was always composed and just well thought out, and it wasn't necessarily (Voice Overlap).

Evan Williams - Obvious
Oh, Live Journal was well thought out?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Oh yeah.

Biz Stone - Obvious
The outline first.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
It's the moods, they're very active.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
It's novel, (Inaudible) that. So I wanted something personally just to update myself, for my own journal of what I was doing at the time and just an easy way to submit that, but the technology just wasn't there, and this was about six years ago. I was also really interested in stars messages, and just IM, like the IM in your AIM Buddy List, you see what, like people are away, people are at lunch, that type of thing. So I thought that was a really cool (Inaudible) and I built a lot of that (Inaudible) into a lot of my previous projects.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Can we say -- I mean obviously a lot of people we know here have been using, can we say dodgeball, while we talk about this.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Sure.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
For me, Twitter has been a little bit easier to use, just because I don't have to use the phone, I don't have to type ad, and it's not so related to my location, did you think about that when you were making Twitter or was that not related?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
There weren't any constraints when I was thinking about this, it's just an open ended question, and I was always thinking about just an easy way to update a Website or update my friends.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Yeah, I'm amazed by the simplicity of it. It's essentially like a single chat room, for the most part, of your friends, and icon, text, and that's it, there's no commenting necessarily on an item, and that simplicity (Inaudible) is the beauty of it too .

Evan Williams - Obvious
So, those familiar with dodge ball, they actually have a feature, the shout outs, (Inaudible) which is essentially exactly the same thing as Twitter, there's just a lot more in dodge ball. The primary use case that they talk about is, if you're out and about and want to meet up with people, and Twitter doesn't have all that structure around that, it doesn't have friends of friends really that you can receive messages, and it doesn't have the venues, and it doesn't have that intelligence built in which makes it arguably less useful for that particular scenario, but because it's less useful, it's just something that you can do all the time, because the point isn't for it o be useful, it's just more fun.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
I have been threatened though, because it's so easy to use.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
It's so easy misuse.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
It's so easy to misuse, they're like Slutsky, learn to use Twitter or I'm turning you off.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
I actually saw that one.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Yeah, you saw that one.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
That was Nick Douglas

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
It was Nick Douglas. So, what is your recommendation for that, like is it still out or...

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Is there any FXC question, how do Newbie's who have ADD use this product properly?

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
It just seems so easy, it's like so -- it's just in, yeah, I'm right there, so I'm just like going to get coffee in my kitchen, like what's the?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
I think we've been finding that socially it works itself out, like your friends are going to tell you (Voice Overlap)

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Just tell you the (Voice Overlap)

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Peer pressure.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
(Voice Overlap) or they're going to stop following you, and they turn you off from the phone.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Yeah, turn you off, Yeah, because I turned off Luxury Luke, because I told them (Voice Overlap).

Eddie Codel - PodTech
I noticed that some people will almost shame other members into being less chatty. I noticed at least one member's like, okay, I'm turning off so and so and so, and then I've noticed that there's been a little bit of response from that person before they get turned off, and then they're like, it's almost like, you're being sent to a corner and you (Voice Overlap)

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Yeah, it's very interesting social dynamics within Twitter.

Biz Stone - Obvious
We've seen people comparing the ratio of the amount of friends and followers that they're having.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Yeah, yeah, So, what are friends and followers, and what's the difference?

Biz Stone - Obvious
Jack.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Jack, you're dominating this conversation.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
This is something we've actually been starting with recently, I think it's a very confusing part of our site, and we're working on it. The main focus of Twitter is you follow someone's updates, and you follow someone's updates on the Web, and you can turn them on on the phone or IM. When you mark someone as a friend, you're basically allowing them to -- we have two other features called Direct Texting and Nudging. Direct Texting is just like a text message where you don't need to know -- I don't need to know your phone number to communicate with you, and you communicate back with me. Nudging is just kind of like a -- you have an update in a while, updated Twitter so all your friends know what you're doing. So that's really the (Inaudible). Right now, you have friends and then you follow the friends, and the following is the act of notification, so following is notification.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Okay, yeah, that's confusing, you need to fix it.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
We're in the process of fixing it.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Because following doesn't seem like notification.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Exactly, yeah.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Oh cool. Well, why don't we take a look at what this looks like, can you give us a demo?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Yes.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Okay, you can't say no anyway.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
So, we're looking at my Twitter account, and I have customized my account, which is pretty red maroon background. So, we allow users to just customize in simple way, background image they can tile it, they can change the color of the links, they can change the sidebar color, and that's about it. This is a listing of all my friends, updating in real time, and this will stream by, if I just watch this Web page. This is where I update my friends and I just say on camera. I go on, my own friends timeline (ph) and I have 90 followers at the moment, so 90 people.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Are watching what you're doing.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Are watching what I'm doing.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Getting that update.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
And getting that update on their phone or on their IM (Inaudible).

Eddie Codel - PodTech
I see, and then since it says 123 friends there, does that mean you're following a 123 other people?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
I -- no, I have 123 friends listed, I think I only follow about 40 or 50 of them.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Oh, I see, so you can have a friend who is not necessarily -- you can have somebody who is a friend, but you don't follow what they're doing.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Yes, I can go to each individual friend's page and turn them on or off, and the way I turn them off is by leaving them...

Eddie Codel - PodTech
I see.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
...at the moment, and then I can follow them again and now Crystal is back on my phone and on my IM.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Okay, very cool. So it's kind of just a way of meeting your friend, they're still your friends, but you're just not...

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Yeah, they're just some friends that I don't necessarily want to hear about 24 hours a day.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Right, like Irina.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Biz next to me just updated from his phone, and his update is right here, its on the -- and Jeremy, who was up here fixing the computer before it went on, also updated.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Oh cool, and I see it tells you where you're updating from, from Web, from mobile.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
It does. So, yeah, this is just more meta information about, I updated from the Web, Jeremy updated from the Web, Biz updated from his phone.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Is that via SMS, (Voice Overlap) phone?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Yes, that's via SMS. Jessica updated via IM.

Biz Stone - Obvious
And everyone who updates also has a (Inaudible) permanent page

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Oh, really.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Yes, so I can go to -- this is recent update, I just get this whacky page of just what Biz said, and I can send this around to my friends or bookmark it or link it.

Biz Stone - Obvious
And star it.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Or star it.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Oh yeah, what does star mean?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Starring is a way to eventually give feedback to people, that Biz, I really like your update, I really like your Twitter, but it's also a way to save what you really like. So I have 41 favorite friends and these are all the Twitters I really enjoyed.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
I see.

Biz Stone - Obvious
It's all Ruby on house right Jack?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
It's all Ruby on your house, all the way from the SMS stack to the Web interface.

Evan Williams - Obvious
That's really Web 2.0.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
So, we have to ask, what is the origin of the name Twitter?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Twitter is a -- if you look it up in the dictionary, it's actually just short burst of activity, and it's something that birds do, its just like chirping.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Okay.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
So we thought that it fit our application perfectly, because we limit each update to 160 characters, they're short, they're rapid, and they come all the time.

Biz Stone - Obvious
Yeah, and your phone kind of twitters with the activity every so often, throughout the day, there is no one and it's (Inaudible).

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
And you're twitter pated (ph), so it just works out, it's a perfect name for it.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Now, I've been using it for a while and I've -- because I actually have to pay for my SMSs, I don't actually have it update me every time when my friends have something to say, so I check it by the web, but I like the fact that I can still do my updates by SMS or by phone.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Yes, Yes.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
So you're able to actually turn on how you feel you might want to be annoyed or updated by it.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
You can also turn off the phone completely.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Oh right.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
And turn off IM completely as well.

Evan Williams - Obvious
We also have settings that let you tell Twitter certain times that you definitely don't want to get SMSs. You can say like, I'll be asleep from this time to this time, I never want you to send anything to my phone, even if I've told you I want something (Inaudible) .

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
So yeah, we have sleep times, and we also have an auto -- something called an Auto Nudger, which if you forget to update your Twitter, every now and then, every like 24 hours, we just send a friendly message that says, please update your Twitter.

Speaker
You hear a few people talking -- it seems like you hear a lot of people talking about how they don't want to be bothered, or they don't want to get so many SMSs, but what we actually hear from a lot more people is, about how they want more, they want more, they want to be able to update more, and they want more messages.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Okay.

Speaker
Even though you'd think that people would be real sensitive to the stuff, it turns out that, like people -- so many people asked us for the Auto Nudge.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Right.

Speaker
We would never have built that automatically, because you'd think it would be annoying.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Yeah, because it does actually seem like people are -- I noticed certain people might post just one thing a day, and then they're answering the question at the top usually that I see that's, what are you doing at this -- what are you doing right now?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
What are you doing right now?

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Yeah, so I guess it's kind of a way to really sort of engage people who might not otherwise participate.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
This is a public timeline, this is the last 100 public updates, and this usually spins down to about 20, 30 -- this is 34 minutes ago of Twitter activity, and this is everyone -- all of our users who would like to Twitter in public. There is an option to protect all your updates as well, and only send them to your friends, but some are more adventurous.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
I see, and how many people are in the system now?

Speaker
Many.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
We're not really comfortable releasing numbers, because it's just doubled and -- Irina wants to know this.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
I hate that.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Well, let me just rephrase then...

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
(Voice Overlap) seriously tell you, it will change, because our user base is doubled in last 25 days.

Speaker
Plus what's the point unless we have 20 million people we can (Voice Overlap).

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Can you scale to five times your capacity, or ten times your capacity in a week or so?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
We do currently have a 120,000 updates, can you do that?

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Well, yeah okay, that's total update statistics?

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
(Voice Overlap)

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
That's the number, and we have 1,907 favorites, people have favorated something, 1,907 times. These are the top favorite Twitters. These are the most popular Twitters on Twitter at the moment.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Very cool. Tell me about the IM part of that a little bit, so you said you can update via IM, which IM clients?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Yeah, so currently we have Jabber through Gmail, the GTalk interface, working, and so you can basically bring up your Gmail, and bring up your chat window, and there is a Twitter bar in the corner, and you can just type your update right there, and also receive all your friends updates from that chat window.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Gotcha, and you have AIM support as well now, right?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
We are eventually -- we're beta testing the AIM support, eventually we'll -- I think we're going to release it next week.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Okay, I think I got an AIM this morning actually, I was able to use it.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
It's working.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Maybe I'm a new beta (Voice Overlap).

Biz Stone - Obvious
It's a cell phone (Voice Overlap)

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Good, good, good. I update like three or five times a day I think, but Jack, what's sort of the average update per user on Twitter?

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
The average update is exactly that, three to five times.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
On average?

Biz Stone - Obvious
Yeah, average (Inaudible) down the average guy.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Very cool.

Irina Slutsky - PodTech
Is there a power user percentage?

Biz Stone - Obvious
Everyone's a power user in here.

Speaker
Three to five updates a day coming from (Inaudible) and Xanga, which is the places I have worked before this, is a lot. So I mean active users of (Inaudible) were like anyone who's published something in the last month, and that could be a comment or a post or anything.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
It's really hard to say day by day, because we find that when someone is doing something interesting, they're going to Twitter more. So, when you're traveling, when you're going home to visit your parents, or when you're jumping out of a plane or something, there's going to be a lot more updates than just a normal day at work.

Biz Stone - Obvious
Especially when you're traveling, because you have that disconnect from your usual routine or people you're usually connected to on your MySpace or whatever, but if you're in the airport and you don't really have anything, you're just sort of feeling around your in pockets like, what can I...?

Eddie Codel - PodTech
You know I actually have a good -- I used it a couple of days ago, I went to go buy a new digital camera, and I just decided I was going to get the best buy, and I kind of really knew what I wanted, but I just wasn't 100% sure, so I just put in there, going to get a new (Inaudible) point camera, any recommendations? By the time I got to the store, two different people actually text messaged me on my phone and said, check out, recommendations.

Biz Stone - Obvious
That's great.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
That's awesome.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
So, it's already been useful for me.

Biz Stone - Obvious
Nice.

Eddie Codel - PodTech
Anyway, very cool, thanks for the demo, I think we're probably running out of time here. So, yeah, appreciate it, thank you.

Jack Dorsey - Obvious
Thank you.

Biz Stone - Obvious
Thank you guys.