biz stone

An Open Letter to Biz Stone

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Dear Biz,

I’m sure you appreciate the intense, burning interest that people have in how Twitter is going to make money. After all, you’ve got more than 50 million users, which has caused the monetization buzz to get more increasingly feverish the more popular that Twitter becomes.

But can you do me a favour: please stop talking about how Twitter is going to be announcing a business model soon. It’s an act that, frankly, has grown tired because it keeps repeating itself.

Yes, I understand that you’ve got to answer the “money” question every time you do an interview but the thing is you keep giving interviews so they keep asking the money question. It’s a vicious circle that’s become more vicious.

That said, it seems that you have a hard time not playing the game so when you appeared on TV yesterday, you declared Twitter will unveil a business model in the next month.

Is this a tease or do you really mean it? The problem is no one is sure whether Twitter will actually announce a business model because we’ve been led down this path before only to be disappointed.

I’m hoping this time you mean it but time will time.


Thoughts about TwitterGate

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

Over the past few days, everything you probably ever wanted to know about Twitter has been available on TechCrunch, which has published a flurry of internal confidential documents provided by French hacker Hacker Croll, who broke into Twitter’s internal systems.

While TechCrunch has attracted a lot of attention for putting on display Twitter’s internal thoughts, discussions, plans and strategic vision, it has also garnered growing criticism for publishing the documents, which were stolen from Twitter.

Personally, I think TechCrunch did what any news organization would do if given something that would make for a terrific story. The documents sent by Hacker Croll to TechCrunch were the equivalent of the unmarked brown envelope sent to newspaper reporters that often provide great material for front paper stories.

This kind of material is a dream come true for news organizations, so TechCrunch’s decision to go to town with several posts was a no-brainer. Twitter is the world’s hottest high-tech company, attracting huge amounts of scrutiny and dissection.

In a competitive world, TechCrunch had an editorial decision to make:

- publish, and face of wrath of people who believe that stolen documents shouldn’t see the light of day; or

- not publish, and risk that one of its major competitors (GigaOm, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb) would be all this story if they had been given the documents.

The news business is not always fair and some stories can be embarassing but that’s the nature of the beast. TechCrunch did what it had to do.

More: If Twitter decides to sue TechCrunch, I think it would be a mistake by pouring fuel on the fire

Addendum: Here’s TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington on how a hacker was able to hack into Twitter’s computer systems.

The Scrutinization of All Things Twitter

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

There are plenty of reasons to be fascinated by Twitter – the growth, the emergence of a new way to communicate and share information, the growing number of valuable and interesting third-party services, and, of course, the entrepreneurs (Biz Stone, Ev Williams and Jack Dorsey) involved.

But the question that needs to asked in the wake of TechCrunch going to town by publishing a tsunami of secret internal documents is whether there has been a company that has attracted this kind of scrutiny, attention and obsession?

Sure, many companies have been thrust into the spotlight – some because of their market dominance (Google, Microsoft), some for their incompetence (Nortel), and some for being evil (WorldCom, Enron).

But Twitter strikes me as a different kind of beast – a start-up with no business plan that has captured the imagination of not only millions of users but a large ecosystem of people with a laser-like focus on the company and the business.

This group includes myself given I’m keenly interested in how Twitter evolves from a phenomenon to a business. And then there’s my Twitter blog, which bounces between talking interesting Twitter services and Twitter itself.

I wonder why Twitter has attracted this kind of following. Is it user growth, the venture capital involved, the utility and potential of the service?

In some respects, Twitter has brought upon itself much of the attention. Stone and Williams have talked a lot about Twitter even though they’ve been able or unwilling to provide any insight into a business model.

In recent months, Stone and Williams have been particularly available, which has made me wonder about ulterior motives. Why would they travel around the world talking about the company when there’s so much going on from an operational and strategic basis?

Are they working on partnerships and acquisitions? Are they grabbing the spotlight while they can? Are they simply building the company’s profile to make it a more attractive takeover target?

Whatever the reason, they have played a key role in fueling Twitter-mania, which clearly spiked this week.

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