Social Alchemy The Changing Nature of Electronic Communication Biz Stone Co-founder, Twitter Inc.

The Changing Nature of Electronic Communication

“ Biz” is not short for “Elizabeth.”

Co-created Xanga.com Original concept: product reviews A bit later, Xanga was transformed into “the weblog community.” Essentially, a social journalling network.

Wrote some books Joined Google Continued blogging

People, Not Pundits All over the world, people are broadcasting their thoughts and expressing themselves. Ideas and emotions are being transmitted via all sorts of media—everything mixing together!

Social Alchemy “ When seemingly pointless thoughts end up creating something valuable.”

What is Twitter? A simple service that asks one question: “ What are you doing?” A device agnostic message routing system that blends existing ubiquitous technology.

Device Agnostic Users can send and receive updates via Mobile Texting, Instant Messaging, or the Web. The Twitter API Third party developers have created hundreds of different ways of interacting with Twitter. Examples at http://twitter.pbwiki.com

Solving Information Overload Twitter changes the expectations traditionally associated with online communication. Answers are rhetorical and updates are ambient. Stay hyper-connected or take a break.

Example Use Cases Social Drinking in Austin Emergency Feeling earthquakes Television Watching Drive News Getting the story fast Applications Calling mom & Twittervision Commerce Saving money on travel Enterprise Connecting distributed teams Public Relations Twittering from JetBlue Marketing Gossiping about MacRumors

Crunching Data API traffic is 20x Web traffic Half of Web traffic is outside US 40% of SMS messages sent outside US Each user follows average 12 others Users update average 3 times per day Data visualizations are just beginning...

Business Model and Opportunities We’re exploring different revenue models Marketing and commercial experiments ongoing (Feel free to contact me if you have questions.) Focused on user experience and growth

Resources Xanga http://www.xanga.com Biz’s Blog http://www.bizstone.com Blogger http://www.blogger.com Twitter http://www.twitter.com API http://twitter.com/help/api Explore http://explore.twitter.com Fan Wiki http://twitter.pbwiki.com/ Happy Twittering! Biz Stone [email_address] +1 510 220 2368 http://twitter.com/biz