I’ve just been in San Francisco and amongst other things heard the CEO of Twitter, Richard (“Dick”) Costolo, talk about he power of real time information, so here’s my twitter feed. The most interesting thing he said, from my point of view, concerned Twitter’s vision.

He said the vision (or mission) is to “Bring you closer.” But, as he said, that’s not even a proper sentence. Brings you closer to what? But, as Jack Dorsey pointed out, users should be able to finish the sentence for themselves. Brings you closer to… whatever you’re interested in.

This is clever stuff, very empowering and very democratic on so many levels, but my worry is still that what people are interested in, and what Twitter is primary used for, is still largely facile and vacuous. It’s largely bringing people closer to trivia, which, I’d argue, distracts them from matters of real substance.

Maybe this doesn’t matter. If 99% of Twitter users are only interested in Lady Gaga then so be it. At least they can connect directly with her thoughts without the obfuscating intervention of agents, PR companies, traditional media organizations and such like. You could argue that this is a positive development, although you could also argue that the removal of traditional gatekeepers is precisely why we are drowning in digital dross and narcissistic nonsense.

The 1% that are left are free to connect to whatever they are interested in, which could be links to great articles from the New York Times or how someone’s day is shaping up down in Palestine or Syria. It’s as facile or fundamental as you want it to be. This said, I’m still rather concerned about why people have such a need to connect to superficial celebrities or broadcast the minutiae of their own lives. Is this because their lives are so isolated or lack real meaning?

Did he make me want to start using Twitter? Not quite. I’ve changed my mind about Twitter, but not about using it myself. I’m already dealing with a deluge of digital data and having to tweet and/or read yet more information from Twitter feeds doesn’t feel like a good idea for me personally.

Here are a few of the other interesting things Dick said:

– It took four years for the first billion tweets to be sent. A billion tweets are now sent every 4 days (Quite interesting if you start to think of this in terms of a global pulse or instant snapshot).

– They are sitting on a huge volume of information, but extracting meaning from the data is extremely difficult. What they are getting good at is seeing where the tweets originate from geographically, in close to real time (You can bet the FBI and CIA are rather interested in this!).

– The migration from the web to apps is a really big trend. They are seeing 40% QTR on QTR mobile growth. (He didn’t mention location based services or location based intelligence and analytics, but he could have).

– Global growth in non-smart phones around the world (e.g. Brazil and India is significant).

– It can be difficult to figure out the difference between a trend and an anomaly.
(Difficult without hindsight. A trend is only a trend until it bends as they say).

– If you look at how businesses are successfully using Twitter (Virgin America was cited as an example), they have an authentic and consistent tone of voice that comes from the heart not corporate PR. (This is really fascinating. In one sense big companies have got to learn to let go and let their own customers develop the brand’s personality and tone of voice).

– Twitter innovates through experimentation (Practice pivoting & ‘fast failure’).

– Innovators need to feel uncomfortable all the time (Only the paranoid survive).

– He’s relaxed about revenue streams – they will come. (Build it and they will come).

Feel free to tweet all this, of course. 🙂